Common names from "not good enough" sources

Yep, and personally I would love to be able to map my own personal name preferences to the iNat taxonomic backbone, for all kinds of uses and reason. But multiply that by a million more users, and one can understand how that would impact performance of the site overall.

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This is a pretty fascinating topic, and I generally agree with @pmeisenheimer’s take that “Common names on iNat should reflect the way people interact with iNat” So perhaps that places me in the more “liberal” wing in that I’d be in favor of allowing a large diversity of common names as long as they are used “seriously” by even a small group of people.

What do I mean by “seriously”? I think the “lumpy horse” example is a good one. Lots of folks may refer to camels as lumpy horses…it’s pretty funny! We’ve also got “trash pandas” and in my own herp community lots of folks use “danger noodle”, “spicy noodle”, “nope rope”, and others for venomous “sneks”. I think these can be funny too, and they are in very common use. People know what they mean (to some extent anyways). But I wouldn’t support including them on iNat.

Why? First, using these names, especially ones that include other organism’s names in them, could lead to search problems (if one is looking for “horse” and sees “lumpy horse” for instance). Especially for people who are less familiar users or not native speakers of whatever the language is that the common name is in, this could be a difficulty/barrier to use. Second, having names like this would probably encourage people to add funny/amusing names which don’t add much to iNat. For instance, having “snek” as a common name for serpentes doesn’t add much, as anyone using “snek” would be able to use “snake”. A surge in less seriously used common names or ones that don’t “add much value” to iNat could actively impede understanding.

I don’t know that there’s any perfect set of rules that can be applied to common names, just some considerations. I think that there’s always going to be something of a judgment call about how appropriate it is to include any common name, but having some standard guidelines might be beneficial. For instance, I’d support guidelines that leans towards including common names in languages/from communities that aren’t yet included for any given species.

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The guidelines are the same whether it is English or a language spoken on 1 island in Papua New Guinea.

Anyone can and should add common names that are clearly established, its just a matter of someone being willing to invest the time in the work. For example I’ve been responsible for adding something like 40,000 names in Scandinavian languages.

All of those were taken from established, typically government or at least academic managed national biodiversity systems.

It still comes down to defining what ‘in use’ means.

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Is it possible to see how many names a particular user added?

I’m not talking about mapping my own personal name preferences to the iNat taxonomic tree. I’m talking about having a way for people to type in their actual common name for an organism they observed, on their own observation only, in a way that would be be prominent to them on their observations when they are looking at them, as well as searchable by others. Maybe that could be accomplished without affecting the taxonomic tree–I don’t know. If it could be, that would further inclusivity.

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I assume the site staff could do so by querying the database, but there is no means in the tools available to users on the website.

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Ok, thanks for the clarification. Maybe something worth considering for a Feature Request. Just adding a displayed field like that wouldn’t be too burdensome, I would guess, but the “searchable by others” part might be more so.

For most of my observations, I have been putting in my common name as the first phrase in the Description. And Description text is searchable in the current observation filters. But I guess this wouldn’t achieve the discreteness or display prominence that you are envisioning.

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Interesting. Do you do delineate this, noting it’s a personal name or?
And do others do this too?

This is another existing type of name classification then already in a sense… a personal name.

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No special notation. I think it’s pretty clear from the context, though, that it is a common name I am typing into my description.

Maybe some, but I haven’t heard that it is a general practice. It’s just always been how I’ve constructed descriptions.

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No; all of Japan’s cicadas have common names in Japanese but those without English common names don’t show any common names with the English setting. I feel like it would be nice if the romaji names appeared in those cases since English speakers sometimes refer to those names, but they’re not really English common names.

Different common names can be set as defaults for different places, which may be your solution here. Everyone I know locally (Ontario) refers to Acer negundo as Manitoba Maple, while everyone I know in the US calls it Boxelder, and the iNat name settings match that. Other species aren’t as simple though; I’ve always known Daucus carota as Queen Anne’s Lace but the current default name set for Canada is Wild Carrot. I have no idea which is actually more prevalent here…

Most of these had already been added on iNat before this discussion. Should we restrict common names on iNat to ones that are practical if it’s become a de facto place to collect common names? I think anyone familiar with internet memes has seen these names, I wonder if they were less hidden if they could help people connect with the site.

Because birds have well established default common names, I’ve noticed that they tend to accumulate obscure nicknames and folk names that are pretty hidden until they cause issues. For example “Carrion Crow” is an obscure and mostly archaic name for Coragyps atratus (Black Vulture), but it’s a well recognized standard name for Corvus corone.

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I mostly do wildflowers, and often learn local heritage through quaint names, often delightfully descriptive. I always thought juxtaposition with the scientific names (changeable as they are too) was ideal. Not so complicated, I hope. BTW, when I see multiple names listed, I just
pick the one I like the most to remember.

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I primarily work with vertebrates and arthropods.

Personally, I try to employ what I understand from the guidelines integrated by iNaturalist Staff. The only major requirement is that names come from “elsewhere”, and I don’t believe that is restricted to field guides, taxonomic aggregators, or scientific publications. Another advisement is that inidividual species have unique common names, which I interpret as individual common names not shared with other taxa. This is usually the only reason why I flag a taxon’s common name for policy reasons. Otherwise it is for discussion - where it seems like a species’ preferred name is not set as the default for unclear reasons.

Common names on iNat have a utilitarian purpose. They are to help users find certain taxa easily.

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Wow, what a huge response! Sorry I haven’t had the time to read all the responses so hope I’m not repeating someone else.
Let’s remember this is a photographic web site, primarily sourced from amateurs.
It is a place to learn and to teach.
The fact that id’s are made from photographs is acceptable in many areas, but not so much with inverts.
So there are various levels of “professionalism” within iNat. iNat is HUGE. So it’s important to remember it means lots of different things to lots of different people.
On the whole I think censorship is wrong. Cutting out “common names” is censorship. I think it will alienate the very people we are trying to bring into the fold. ie making newbies into amateurs, amateurs into better amateurs, etc.
So I think the only problem with common names is when they are wrong; cause then they are confusing.
I’d love to see a system whereby there are multiple common names by location. So if I log into South Australia (my default) then I don’t see common names of local natives like “Russian Thistle”. From my perspective it’s wrong. Of course for Russians that quite the norm & acceptable.
I admit, I break the rules & make up common names. I try and do it by creating an English translation of the binomial name (which invariably is a cross between latin & ancient greek).
But most people (newbies, amateurs, the people we are trying participate) can’t remember binomial names. They are jibberish to them. But they do remember names in their native tongue, English in my case.
Generally scientists don’t care about common names, so they can ignore them.
So please, don’t get strict about common names. Open them up to be more meaningful to the locals (ie make them regional) and HELP people learn really interesting stuff and provide lots of photo’s which then become useful to scientists to work out (statistically) populations, range extensions, etc.
Just my two cents :-)

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Can you explain a thistle example little more, please? I believed everything with Russian Thistle was added as common names. For Russians any English name is acceptable as they don’t use them and those plants have completely different names.

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Only use full standard common names from standard lists are usefull, batch loaded.
Other common names will cause a Babylonian confusion and does not help at all.

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Just an anecdote: I was quickly clearing out some Unknown observations, and for some reason (perhaps related to recent time spent on the ever-entertaining Crap Wildlife Photography in Facebook), my fingers typed “birb” when my brain meant “bird”. But someone had previously entered “Birbs” as an alternate common name for “Birds”, so I did not have to retype. I laughed, but it was ever-so-slightly useful also.

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Did you notice while perusing the Birbs that an alternative name for Hummingbirds is Vibrating Midget Birbs?

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:). The mountain behind my neighborhood is called Mt. Umunhum. It is a word for hummingbird from the old local indigenous languages (SF Bay Area, a collection of tribes currently known as Ohlone). If you ever heard an Anna’s Hummingbird near your ear, you totally get that name. Although, a native descendent told me that her tribe’s local variant is Um (and you can hear that in the rapidly beating wings, too).

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Surely if Birbs and Borbs are acceptable alternates to Birds as English names on iNat, then shouldn’t Boids, the New York City term for avian dinosaurs, also be there?

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For the most authoritative guide to American English usage of “birb,” consult Audubon: https://www.audubon.org/news/when-bird-birb-extremely-important-guide
:smiley:

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