The thorn trees of Africa are not happy to become Vachellia and Senegalia - instead of Acacia. Meanwhile adding insult to injury we must use Acacia for our invasive Australian wattles (which don’t have thorns).
PS sedum will remain in usage as a common name for the horticultural industry (and gardeners and casual collectors)
Most discussions about common names get off track because the term “common name” means two different things (see this reference). It’s original meaning (going back to the 1700s) was the name in common use by the regional populace. It can now also just refer to any vernacular (non-Latin/non-scientific) name regardless of whether it is in common use by the regional populace. By the original meaning, you can’t invent or change a common name. A new vernacular name must naturally, over time, be adopted by the regional populace before it can be called a “common name”. I don’t know when scientists started trying to make vernacular names “official” by publishing lists of common names. But I doubt that many of the new vernacular names have become commonly used by the regional populace. Common names (by the original meaning) are extremely stable, even if they make no sense or are misleading.
With that clarification, it is obviously wise for anyone attempting to introduce a new vernacular name to do so with great care and thought, and engage in discussion with one’s colleagues, before doing so. Because iNaturalist has become a sort of “regional populace”, it is a natural place in which new vernacular names are introduced (either for species which do not have names or for species where taxonomic changes have rendered one or more of their original common names incorrect or misleading). If we, iNaturalist citizens, are to be wise about this, perhaps there need to be some guidelines for introducing new vernacular names and create a way to facilitate consensus-building before a new “official” vernacular name is introduced. Perhaps it would be wise to not allow a new vernacular name to be designated as the official “common name” on iNat without some kind of consensus. The consensus (or support) wouldn’t have to be curators. It could be set up in a way similar to voting on data quality assessments. It doesn’t seem wise to allow anyone to willy-nilly introduce (perhaps thousands) of new vernacular names. We can continue to allow it and deal with the aftermath or create the guidelines (following those already published by other groups–such as the ESA). If the technology to require a consensus (or support) isn’t to be implemented, then at least require that the person proposing the new name click a box saying that they have read and followed the guidelines before submitting the new name (or name change). Perhaps the “pool” of alternative common names could be dynamic, with people being able to cast their vote and have the “official” name dynamically change as the consensus changes.
The problem with names isn’t that someone is introducing a new vernacular name which the general populace may naturally accept over time, it’s that someone is attempting to foist upon everyone else a new official vernacular name. Those are two very different things!
It’s really weirdchange though, rather change 600+ that were named later, than small amount that were named initially and really deserve the name.
Vernacular is defined as “the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a particular country or region”. A common name is a vernacular name, but not all vernacular names are commonly used names. Yes, many names that are now commonly used among the populace were coined in a scientific context (a name proposed in the vernacular became a commonly used name). A vernacular name is any name (regardless of who proposed it or how) that is in the language spoken by ordinary people (i.e. not Latin in this context). And yes, vernacular names proposed by ESA (or any other authority) may never be accepted by the general populace (which includes scientists) and thus may never become commonly used names.
In 1946, a paper was published in The Wilson Bulletin “Suggested principles for vernacular nomenclature” in an attempt to dissuade the continued use of vernacular names of birds that were misleading. By making it more difficult for someone to invent poor vernacular names here on iNat (and thus contribute to the poor name becoming a commonly used name), we can make it easier on folks down the road (so that someone doesn’t have to write a similar paper for spiders or mites, or protists, etc to clean up the resulting vernacular taxonomic mess).
Most scientific documents equate vernacular name with common name (though Merriam Webster mentions “common name” under the definition of common being “occurring or appearing frequently”. So it’s not surprising that some folks may equate “common name” with “a commonly occurring name”. I’m just making a distinction in order to help folks avoid talking past one another in instances where some people think that another person is using the term “common name” to imply that it’s commonly used vs. just being a name in the vernacular.
Thanks for clarification! On iNat the common names that are displayed as the main default names for organisms (when available) also mean “commonly used name”, per iNat guidelines. Advocacy of novel names on iNat occasionally abuses this difference in terms (“anybody can invent a name and then it will instantaneously become a common name per definition and common names are what is iNat showing so where is the problem?”). However, from this and other forums on iNat, it is clear that misunderstanding of terms is likely not the reason why invention of common names on iNat is accepted by some. Proponents of novel names on iNat actively argue that novel names are better than no names for any organism despite being aware that they are not commonly (meaning ferquently) used. The believe is that some sort of natural selection process will remove “bad” common names and leave only “good” common names. I think there are unrealistic expectations on the functionality of common names and there are some strong alternative perspectives on the principal role of common names (e.g. invention of common names is seen as a way of engaging public in science). iNat administrators recognize it as a problem but assume that the scale of the problem (in terms of how many names are invented/how bad they are/ how easily they propagate outside of iNat) is not large enough to make it a priority for iNat. If you can start building database of names for your focal taxonomic group that will show how many common names used on iNat were introduced despite not being commonly used it should help to bring attention of iNat admins to this problem. I tried to start this initiative here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/data-on-history-of-common-name-changes/27507 but I’m not sure to what extent we need to collect the data manually versus can be retrieved and filtered automatically.
I started with manual revision for iNat termites and so far it seems there might be more common names invented on iNat (or if not invented then used in such small scale that literature or internet search does not find them) than there are termite common names really commonly used. I suspect at least in arthropods this might be rather frequent situation which is quite alarming.
I was looking through the flags for jumping spiders and found something interesting. Paraphidippus basalis was flagged when someone asked the question “Can someone please tell me the history of how this species got its common name on iNaturalist? I haven’t been able to find any other source that uses this common name (or any common name)”. An answer was given “This name is exclusively applied to this species in National Geographic’s Photo Ark (https://www.joelsartore.com/inv003-00017/)”. I did a Google (and Google Scholar search on the common name in question and found a paper published this year. The authors were speculating on its habitat “The majority of anecdotal observations of P. basalis have reported this species on agave, yucca, and sotol (Cowles 2018; GBIF.org 2019a; Richman et al. 2019) and the common name used in iNaturalist (2020) for P. basalis is the ‘‘agave jumping spider.’’ Other anecdotal observations have rarely reported P. basalis on the ground (GBIF.org 2019a)”.
That’s a bit unnerving, that a scientist would use the iNat common name as a bit of evidence for it’s habitat preference!
Well I wouldn’t because that’s what my field guide calls it.
So my next question: if I put up a common name that I have seen used in a book somewhere since long before iNaturalist, and someone challenges it, how would I defend it? I can photograph the page in the book, but then where would I submit it?
I think a reference to the title and author of the book should be good enough for most people. But if you need to show a photo you could upload it to Imgur or Gyazo or whatever image hosting site and then send a link to it in the conversation on the flag.
Quite true, and I would argue that a common name that changes whenever the scientific name changes is not truly a common name, but instead is a scientific name in the vernacular language (and is in common use by no one, at least initially).
Absolutely, this is very important. There is a difference between names used by ordinary people, often very regional and traditional ones, and (semi-)scientific names in other languegs than Latin. Even names in other languages may be binomial and use the Genus species structure and mostly be invented by scientists. Czech “common” names on iNaturalist are mostly the latter.
This is certainly an issue.
iNaturalist merges Chamaenerion with Epilobium. But pulls the Czech name from a source that acknowledges Chamaenerion. So it shows vrbka úzkolistá for Epilobium angustifolium, but Epilobioum is normally vrbovka. Czech sources that merge Chamaenerion into Epilobium use vrbovka úzkolistá.
Similar is Lysimachia arvensis, which in Czech literature is normally regarded as Anagalis and so called drchnička rolní and not vrbina (Lysimachia). To be fair, it is certainly much less confusing to stay with the traditional name in this case. Similarly with Trientalis.
I certsinly hope no-one will try to coin new Czech names for those horrendous genuses of Aria, Torminalis, Karpatiosorbus,… on iNaturalist. The one for Sorbus s.l. is entirely sufficient.
iNat doesn’t merge Chamaenerion with Epilobium though https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/564969-Chamaenerion-angustifolium
I’d say probably iNat needs all the names there’re for this species, in Russian Chamaenerion also has to names, one is same as Epilobium, and having both means people can type in any that they would use in real life, I myself use both depening on random chance of which name came first in my mind.
Lysimachia arvensis also it seems stays in science with traditional different name, other example from same genus is Lysimachia europaea which also stays with old name, I don’t think any people on iNat change old names to match a genus, usually they try to add any name where there’s no local one at all. I think most of matching genus type of thing happens with foreign plants that have no natural common name in the language, so it’s artificial from the start, thus can be changed to match the genus. It doesn’t always happens to only those plants, but it’s much easier to do it with them.
Sorry, it is the other way round, the newest Czech key merges them! And iNaturalist uses the merged Czech name as the Czech “common name”. Sorry for this confusion. I ended up doing what you suggested, just adding the other name as another synonym.
That’s cool and all and I agree with the guideline, but now you have to define the term “in regular use” for organisms that are normally never discussed in non-Latin terms by anyone.
Good point and I think some users here adressed it: in that case the field is left blank. In such case iNat could show for example a common name of a higher taxonomic unit plus the scientific name, E.g. Fungus-growing termite Acanthotermes acanthothorax
@charlie Thank you for saying this.
I am also wondering why “Common Names” are an issue , we already have a “scientific system” in place to ensure we know what organism we are talking about.
Common English Bird names (in India atleast) are constantly being changed and birders do get irritated, however in this case it is the Scientists who are changing the bird names to “suit” their specific “scientific” understanding of the bird.
However this is not the case with other languages - in many cases we don’t even have any names for them. In the India State of Kerala - they undertook an exercise to “make” local names for the all the birds found in that state. Which I think is a good thing.I think a similar exercise is underway to give “common names” for Butterflies in the hope that it helps promote butterfly education and conservation.
But what about other groups - Insecta for example (Beetles, butterflies, moths ) in how many languages can anyone say they have names for all of such organisms.
In which case if someone has thought up of a local name, and has the interest to put it out on iNaturalist, I see no reason (unless there is something malicious about it) to not use it.
I think the proposed voting system is interesting, but would be really difficult to implement. Also, even with how large the iNat community is, we’re still a very tiny subset of the people who use these names in the world. For many taxonomic groups (and especially the ones that are coming up here for which common names are a problem), we only have one or a couple “experts”, meaning that we don’t have many potential voters familiar with these organisms.
I think that the proposal to make someone offering a new common name read a pop-up box and tick that they have followed the iNat guidelines for common names is a really good idea! It is a reminder but also a deterrent to adding a bunch of common names since it makes it a little more work. The bulk adds are already reviewed by iNat staff (to my understanding) so this should already be protected a bit from abuse.
I’ve discussed my thoughts at a previous discussion, Common Name Being Deleted - Mardi Gras Sharpshooter, and will quote myself to reiterate the biggest problem I see: “For relatively obscure taxa that lack established or any common names, I think the potential for an iNat “spark” to spread throughout the internet and unduly influence tomorrow’s generation of primarily online-educated users who may not check reliable sources is all the greater.”
One way to reduce the proliferation of common names invented on iNat, or unduly popularized by iNat, would be to require (or strongly recommend) that editors add a source for a common name, to increase transparency. As far as I can tell, looking at the history of edits for a given common name only shows who added the name, not where they may have gotten it from (if anywhere). One specific example is the millipede species Gosodesmus claremontus, which iNaturalist currently calls the “Pink Feather Boa Millipede”. Now, some may like this common name and some may not (I personally find it rather silly), but from what I can tell, before being added to iNaturalist it had only ever been called this in print by one source, an invertebrate breeder/seller who called it such in a 2020 YouTube video and on their website. So is this a commonly used name or a trade name invented to increase marketability? Now of course, the common name is repeated in every site they may mirror, link to, or reference the iNat profile or an iNat observation of the species, including Wikipedia, one of the most visible outlets on the internet. Compared to insects, and perhaps even arachnids, millipedes in general suffer from a paucity of widely used common names, with only a few species regularly appearing in field guides and encyclopedias, even fewer given vernacular names in such, and many families or orders entirely lack what could be considered ‘commonly used common names’. I’m sure there are groups of organisms with even less consideration of vernacular names (bacteria, algae, deep sea invertebrates, etc.). Requiring that people adding a vernacular name also add a source for their name (even if it’s a commercial website) would be a first step into assessing the credibility, regional appropriateness, and relative frequency of a name.
I present to you Hymenotorrendiella eucalypti, which grows exclusively on Acacia leaves and has nothing whatsoever to do with eucalyptus.
Regarding common names though, it’s quite easy to just turn them off, so I don’t really see why anyone sees it as an issue.
Common names are the route most people first engage with nature, and it’s what most users will be looking for when they start inaturalist too - not some standardized name, but the name they grew up using. If you’ve always known pillbugs only as gramfy croojers, then you’re going to type that in and see what pops up.
Trying to enforce standardization of common names and removing anything you think was “invented” in iNat is a recipe for disaster, because as several other users have pointed out, how are you going to prove that it was invented here and is not just a name commonly used - but not by the (generally) white, well-off, college-educated, suburban English-speakers who write biology documentation?
I guarantee you nobody has ever written down half of the common names in regular use in my mother-in-laws hometown in the Appalachians - doesn’t mean they’re any less valid or less used just because there’s not a scientific citation for them.
Currently working thru Unknowns from ‘other’ African countries, and am happy to see iNat picking up French common names - which makes it more useful.
If the observer asks iNat for a French common name and gets the scientific name - then the system is working as intended.