Maybe more in some taxa or geographies than others then?
I spend a lot of time on iNat, allbeit mainly in European Diptera.
I only know of one invented name that I come across regularly and it’s a name I see as beneficial, so I’m glad nobody has taken it down yet. I’d be curious to know if there are invented Diptera names present which I haven’t noticed, perhaps I’m just not paying attention to the common names.
The testimonies in the threads I’ve read often mention a single name or two which are problematic or invented. I’m yet to see threads which show evidence of “large scale” invention.
Making up a common name for something that already has one is a problem–like Charlie’s example of calling Sugar Maple “Charlie’s Sweet Syrup Spurting Maple.” I think we all agree about that.
But why is it such a big deal if something that lacks a common name is given a unique, appropriate name? Even though it turns out to be against iNat rules? As long as we don’t start changing our common names as often as scientific names for taxa have been changing, what is the harm.
BTW I have never added a made-up common name to iNat. I am not a curator and always believed that only curators could add common names. That ability probably should be restricted to curators. Certainly, only curators should be able to change common names. Otherwise, we would end up with names changing back and forth.
I believe iNat should change its policy to allow curators to create common names if the names are appropriate and are unique to a particular taxon that currently has no common name in use. I understand that alesbucek disagreess strongly. So sue me!
Only curators can change default common name, but everyone can add them, it can’t be only a curators’ task, I am not a curator and I had to add hundreds or probably thousands of common names, because nobody else did.
I’ve been tempted to add Vietnamese common names, but the problem is that there are often so many recognized common names for each species, rarely with any specific one having nation-wide dominance, that it seems like a bad idea.
I’ll sometimes include a comment in the observation itself that lists some of them though.
I think that would be very interesting piece of metadata. I’d say if you have the time and energy, add them. This type of data might enable some interesting linguistics research.
& @alesbucek The liberal use of diacritics in Vietnamese might complicate the searching issue. Seem like it might require adding them with and without diacritics for them to show up when people try to type out the Vietnamese names.
Well, it might be a thing to do, we have problems because of ё/е, and from my experience having both versions is the best, I think it’s within the rules. Of course it’s harder if person uses one but not another, but having two versions should be enough probably.
I’m pretty sure myself that it’s happening. Usually when I find a common name who’s validity I’m unsure of, I simply search it up on Google. Often, the only thing that is returned is the iNat page. When I add common names, I always make sure they come from a proper source like the USDA, etc.
Ha! I have seen that before, and it’s pertinent to me. My parents were from Belfast (I was also born there), and mum always called them Slaters. That’s my default name for them, and I don’t really know what they are referred to in Winnipeg (and I’ve been here since I was two). I guess it’s an example of the usage of a common name being transmitted across the ocean.
we are aware of the guidelines, but it’s still fine to discuss them and whether or not we agree with them. No one here is suggesting going rogue. But there are a lot of valid issues brought up here for instance the ones by @earthknight about how the current naming policies can actually be exclusionary and culturally insensitive.
again, all names are ‘made up’. i think you’re saying only people with a certain social standing, or the right amount of schooling, or something, should be able to make names. This is one cnoice we could make, but it has consequences. It excludes a bunch of people. Also… there are plenty of horrible existing common names which are horrific ranging from inaccurate and wrong all the way to full on genocide-referencing racial slurs. I’d also argue that naming a species after an individual human should always be avoided, but there’s no official policy to that effect.
this literally defeats the purpose of common names, if they are just the Latin names translated into English, they aren’t common names they are just Latin words translated into English (or any other language). Common names are meant to be culturally significant signifiers, and if the only culture that addresses a tiny mite is iNat culture, a name someone maeks up here has more value in my mind than a translation of latin names into English words.
Like, you realize that the people describing and studying and looking at the organisms literally always made up common names for them, right? In the past it heavily skewed towards certain demographics, the same ones everything else heavily skews toward.
I don’t see why, this thread is literally about naming policy.
It’s possible to both follow and vocally disagree with a rule.
well this is a bit of another issue but yes there are a bunch of actual botanists who make up and change common names, trying to push their own version of ‘consistency’ (we had one guy try to change all the aspen and cottonwood names to ‘poplar’ to match the genus but literally no other person uses these names). The names used should be to our knowledge the best and most widely used in the region they are tagged to.
Maybe we need a separate category for in-community names. Like, iNat Common Names :)
Even worse, already existing iNat common names are translated into Latin. There are “common names” of subspecies on iNat, where the species already had a common name but now the subspecies has a “common name” as follows: “[Latin name]” “[Latin name]” “ssp. [Latin name].”
This is something that absolutely infuriates me in scientific names. So often the official name of a species basically translates into "general genus category; me, me, look at me, my name goes here, me, me!, or “my mistress/wife/favorite comic character/social media twat/organization that funded the study/etc”.
From my perspective there is little that is more utterly useless, egotistical, and disrespectful to the species in question, and the people who often knew about it far before anyone “discovered it”, but it’s what we are left with. I’d far prefer that we reform the scientific nomenclature process than the common name process.
Does “common name” mean that the name is in the common language, or that it is the name used by common people (as opposed to academics)? Or maybe the distinction between common and scientific names was made back when those were the same thing since all academic writing was in Latin…
Anyway I think that distinction is relevant because it results in different interpretations of what a common name is. Some people think that if a name is in English (or other relevant common language) then it should be on iNaturalist, whereas other people tend more towards only recognizing names that have gained usage among the general population (“the commons”).
really a ‘common name’ is just a name. They arise the same way any other words arise. Scientific names on the other hand have a very defined if often flawed process for their creation and modification.
“Common name” only means that some ‘local’ people have a name for said organism. That may be local at the scale of a few kilometers (as is the case where I’m working for certain species), or it may be within an entire language.
It doesn’t refer to the common language, nor to the ‘common’ people. It refers to the local (regional) vernacular, which varies enormously within both the language and people.
is contradicting following (at least if by “going rogue” you mean creating new names on iNat)
Because if nobody is agreeing with creation of new names on iNat, how could we discuss whether we agree or not? Then we all disagree and we can move on to the actual topic of this thread - how to stop creation of new common names by iNat users. Or people on iNat will have the courage to say that they enjoy creating new names and that they like that every organism they observe has a unique common non-Latin name. In that case we need to look at the whole thing from a new perspective and start discussing what functions we expect from common names and if our expectations are realistic. I hoped this can be avoided by building on top of existing guidelines.
I completely agree that everything written above by everybody are valuable opinions. They just do not respect the specific topic and therefore this is another valuable yet broad discussion of common versus scientific names.
There were many discussions at this level and I can not add much useful to them. I went now through some of the older discussion threads and actually everything I wanted to discuss was already discussed and it did not reach any conclusion. I think @joe_fish expressed here very clearly all my concerns and also many of the possible solutions or strategies I tried to suggest.
i would propose allowing creation of common names in certain settings but tracking them separately from the ones that have references so that people could choose whether to display those. That might result in a ‘loss’ of some names until they were linked to references again. Perhaps this is not feasible but i also don’t see any point in bemoaning that something by its very nature casual and culturally informed is too casual and culturally informed.
Topics drift, this one actually seems pretty consistent with the original topic to me, it may instead be that you are just finding that people have a different view than you, which is all part of the process.
Ultimately if you want to filter out all common names that were created without a rigorous scientific process you can already do that. Just configure your settings to show scientific names as default and stop using the common names at all. I have scientific names first as my setting.
I think the general consensus I’m getting from this thread is that most people replying don’t think it’s a big enough problem to be worth the consequences of meaningfully fixing it, e.g. locking down common names to curator only or requiring curators to review each proposed common name addition. So I definitely disagree that people are off topic here, they just don’t agree with your findings.
As for your two examples, I agree that the spider example is an issue because it confusingly links two separate genera. But the “carton nest termite” one? From my naive point of view I honestly don’t have much of an problem with that if the only issue is that the name was made up, given it isn’t confusing anything and appears to be a serious name.
I’m generally in the camp that this isn’t such a major problem that it would be worth locking common names exclusively to an already overburdened curator team. The result of that, I think, would be that very few new common names would be added, especially to more obscure species.