You say that like a name used in the pet trade to market a species for sale and a common name are different things - when in fact a “trade name” is just another (perfectly reasonable) type of common name.
3 Likes
Every common name had a first person to use it. It became a common name by others agreeing. So what’s the problem here?
2 Likes
That other people haven’t agreed to use it, and might not ever, especially if they knew the name’s origin.
Hmmm
In the Indian Medicinal Plant trade there are tonnes of plants that are harvested / extracted / ripped from the wild. Many of these plants are protected by National and Regional Forest (and Conservation) laws, and many of them are sourced “exclusively” from the wild.
The trade names for many of these are purposely kept confusing and they refer to different plants in different times (when protection may or may not be removed). Local governance mechanisms often ignore the Scientific name, especially as poor collectors have no idea except the local / trade name and what they have been indicated to find and get. Often new plants appear on the collectors radar and then the “trade name” takes prominence over the local / common name.
So I would be wary of saying trade names are the same as common names.
1 Like
Selling plants on a sketchy market and selling a fish species under a new name you invented are two different things, however I would still argue both are good sources of common names.
3 Likes
Interesting, because we were ID’ing unknowns and came across Darth Maul Bug. We recognized this as a more recent Star Wars reference and so we wondered who gave it this common named and if it has caught on. Doing some google searches, we found someone on Twitter wishing Spilostethus hospes were called Darth Maul Bug as recently as June 2020. Brisbaneinsects.com also calls it Darth Maul Bug (https://www.brisbaneinsects.com/brisbane_lygaeoidbugs/MilkweedBug.htm). But we don’t know how to tell who coined the common name or what Milkweed-type common name(s) it might have had prior.
Interestingly this appears to be fairly well-established name, with about 417 Google results (https://www.google.com/search?q="Spilostethus+hospes"+"darth+maul+bug"&rlz=1CAHZJV_enUS970&ei=JwzvYdCBOY660PEP2vKH4AQ&start=0&sa=N&ved=2ahUKEwiQsfGZncv1AhUOHTQIHVr5AUw4ChDy0wN6BAgBEDQ&biw=1366&bih=617&dpr=1&safe=active&ssui=on), going as far back as 2012 and possibly earlier.
2 Likes
I don’t know much about the fishy fish business , but there is nothing monetarily sketchy about the medicinal plant (and fungi) trade in India (or the Himalaya), it is one of the biggest unorganized industries .
The Ophiocordyceps_sinensis is just one recent example.
1 Like
There is brisk trade in plants for traditional medicine in South Africa.
With issues around sustainable use, and rare and threatened plants.
Ring-barking trees is also a problem near cities.
I can empathize.
Also on one side is a genuine demand for reliable traditional practices - of which only a small portion (reliablility wise) appear in the humongous and largely unmonitored Ayurvedic industry and on the other is the totally ruthless stripping of anything of any value because some one some where said it works and it promoted by corporate advertising and even nationalistic “fervourism”.
1 Like
The issue is that, if I’m not mistaken, iNaturalist isn’t supposed to be a publisher of original taxonomic information, and I think standards should be a little bit higher than “at least one person on Earth said it once and at least one other person added the name to iNat”. Someone may state or comment, be it on iNat, Flickr, Reddit, or in real life: “this bug reminds me of a Power Rangers villain” or “looks kinda like my childhood classmate Tom Jackson,” but I don’t think that alone is justification to “formally” call it “the Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger Beetle” or “Tom Jackson Beetle” on iNat and thus every site that mirrors iNat. Many species even in North America still lack common names (several field guides to insects I have simply state “no common name” when applicable), and I think that the more conservative approach is better than reaching to apply tenuous, joking, or extremely uncommon “common” names.
1 Like
I don’t think this is a major issue. I haven’t “agreed” to use most of the common names I use or are in use, and I don’t really know the origin of most of them either. If someone doesn’t like a given common name, they don’t have to use it! I’m sure that there are other species whose common names stem from people who bred them first or sold them as pets or whatever.
2 Likes
Most common names have been in use for centuries or, in some cases, millennia. Finding out that someone invented a name for marketing purposes a few years ago is, for all intents and purposes, finding out that it isn’t a common name.
“Common name” is not a synonym for “English name”, it’s a hyponym. (Replace “English” with any other language if relevant.)
5 Likes
“Common name”, “colloquial name”, and “English name” are all the same thing for the purposes of iNat.
1 Like
Translating the binomial to the local language is not a common name - it is a translation.
A common name is supposed to already be in common use. Recognisable to local people.
1 Like
Well, most plants here have translated latin as common name, some are quite old and they are in great use, so I wouldn’t say they’re not common, in the end big part of common names use latin species word in them as old names consisted of one word. e.g. 6 languages on iNat use Opuntia translation as main name for them.
2 Likes
I disagree. There are good reasons to only document common names on iNat, not all colloquial names. The display name for a species especially, whether globally or in a particular region, should be a common name, not just a colloquial name. And of course, most common names on iNat are not English names, though I assume you agree with that part.
Even if non-common colloquial names are to be recorded on iNat, I strongly believe that it’s important to note which names are common names and which aren’t somewhere on iNat.
3 Likes
But you can choose to mark it as “not in common use” when adding a name and it won’t show up as main name, but will be searchable.
I largely agree.
This isn’t up for debate. It has been confirmed by staff as site policy.
1 Like