Personally, I do agree that organisms named after European explorers would ideally be renamed, especially those named after people known for their racist/imperialist attitudes. If you HAVE to name it after a person, why not name it after an indigenous person? After all, they were the ones who often already knew the species in question well, and introduced the European explorer to it.
I’ve always disliked the idea of a bird or mammal being named after some dead guy and then everyone has to repeat their name forever when referring to the species. I think that names describing the animal in some way after their appearance, habits, or geographic location is great. In my opinion it’s best overall to keep biological names apolitical.
On the other hand, as others have pointed out, in many regions and countries there are hundreds of local languages - if you are going to replace the English name with one of those languages, which one? Why that language over all the others? In such cases it is simplest to keep the English name and elevate the local languages’ version to equal status.
Also, when speaking in a particular language, you would use that language’s terms to refer to things. So when speaking English, why not use the English name for it?
Overall, I think for me it would be ideal to replace all names of organisms named after people with generic/descriptive names, and keep the rest as is.
You dont need to be a curator to add a new common name, all users can do it, and when they do it, they can enter what if any places the name should be associated with.
Editing of existing common names, including their places of use used to be available to all users, but was turned off for this very reason. Too many edit wars about who should be forced to see what name. Admittedly most of those wars were European vs North American usages but the principle was the same.
Now only curators can edit those settings and they are expected to do so in line with approved site policies on names.
The ‘what is set as the default name’ is a bit of a red herring or even more poorly phrased. All that setting does is determine what name is shown to a user who is running the site in the language that name is in and has no settings about what to prioritize will see. I could go in and set the Danish name as the default name on every species, and it would have no impact on almost any site user . Effectively all the default name does in almost all cases is determines the English name displayed to English site users with no set preferences.
I’m with others than entering First Nations or indigenous names under English is not an appropriate choice unless the word has entered into widespread common use in English. Entering ‘Wapiti’ as an English name is fine, it has entered widespread use in English. Entering a First Nations name for Mountain Goat is not, as it has not done this.
Allowing users to choose what language they see for common names would alleviate this. But it is not a minor fix. Names are displayed in so many places on the site. I’m not sure how modularized the code is to get a display name for a user, but what is now a binary choice (site language setting vs place preference) becomes a three way choice (site language setting vs place preference vs common name language preference).
For example I would never choose if available to enter English as the language name to display my common names in as it would virtually guarantee seeing the American names when I want the Canadian ones. So the place preference of Canada choice still needs to be there.
I had treated this current discussion as one about naming conventions in general, but as it relates to iNaturalist, I do think that the system works fine as is, and that unilaterally renaming species on the basis of ‘decolonisation’, on iNaturalist, would ignite a political controversy that iNaturalist does not need or want.
If the name is changed by the expert groups who are the authorities on taxonomy due to such campaigns, then so be it. Until then, retain the formal names that have been set for the species in question.
You can display common names from specific regions in your settings under “content and display”. I display common names used near New Haven CT but have also switched the display to prioritizing scientific names so all observations list the scientific name first. This is maybe daunting for a person who isn’t familiar with them, but it is actually easier to use as you can view things by taxonomic rank (so there may be many species of “Sallow Moth” but if you use genus you can remove all the inaccurate common names).
This is an example of how common names just can’t have a default “correct” or “incorrect”. Assuming a neutral arbiter of what name should be used as the default, this is a difficult if not impossible question to determine if we should use “Reef Triggerfish”, “Wedge Triggerfish”, “Pakol” or “Humuhumunukunuku’apua’a” as the proper common name. I don’t think it is unfair for users to want to use the English common name, but they can change their settings to “Hawaii” if they want to see the Hawaiian names, right? For a fish that is widespread, there is no set “proper” name. The English common name does not need to be seen as problematic. If it was culturally insensitive then it is a problem, but “Reef Triggerfish” is not. A good compromise: Rhinecanthus rectangulus is at least consistent everywhere.
Just… thank you for posting this. Regardless of how it speaks to iNat policy and practice, this is an important thread to tease in a meditation I’ve been having about names. However one frames it- decolonializing, localizing, reindiganizing- these are all facets of the same gem. They acknowledge that there are other ways of knowing then the Western enlightenment tradition, and other historical and linguistic roots then Latin and German. It seems to me that ethnobiology to this point has primarily been seen as a means of preservation, but not of restoration.
There’s a lot to say on this subject that probably won’t fit in the scope of this forum thread, but I hope people don’t conflate recognition of one tradition as abandonment of another, or see the work of ethnobiology through the lens of political correctness.
Pardon me, but this pushes a lot of buttons for me. I did a Masters in Indigenous Development a few years ago, and the refrain I heard all the time was ‘Decolonisation’. I disagreed with this concept, and was shunned for two years - and it has left an emotional scar. I believe that once a place is Colonized, it is impossible to Decolonise it. Colonisation is a process that has been going on since humans developed. It’s possible to change the paradigm of the colonised place, but the overarching effects on indigenous inhabitants will not go away. As has been pointed out, it is possible (and easy) to add an indigenous name to the list of common names. As has also been pointed out, different indigenous nations have different names for the same organism. Which one gets precedence? Cree, Ojibway, Haudenosaunee? The whole Latin binomial naming system is in essence an effect of Colonisation. As has also been pointed out, different English regions have different common names for the same organism, which is why I use the binomial name for searching.
So add indigenous names if you wish to. Many folks have done so, in many languages. But please, don’t make this a political issue that essentially has no resolution - we can only move forward in time, not backwards.
Part of the problem with Hawaii in particular is that the Hawaiian names are in fact used in English, but the ones that iNat uses as “English names” are ridiculous names coined by the nursery industry that literally nobody uses in Hawaii. I am a conservation biologist working in Hawaii (originally from the mainland US), and you will never, ever hear anyone refer to Wikstroemia uva-ursi as “hillside false ohelo” (to give one example).
There are a few examples where there are English names in common usage for things with Hawaiian names (e.g. the crested honeycreeper/ʻākohekohe), or where an English name was in use because there was no known Hawaiian name but one was later coined (e.g. the Maui parrotbill/kiwikiu), but these are exceedingly rare. Those two are actually the only ones I can think of, aside from migratory non-endemic sea and shore birds, and fish (in which case local common names are appropriate). For plants there is no real ambiguity, the Hawaiian name is the common name in English.
That is the case with nearly all Hawaiian plants, and most birds and fish. They may not be well known because the taxa aren’t talked about much outside Hawaii, but that’s the usage among English speakers here. For plants especially, having “common names” listed that aren’t actually in common use anywhere is the frustrating part.
It looked to me like the consensus was to enter the Hawaiian name as the English name when it is used as such. Ohia would be an example – English-speakers normally use the Hawaiian name. And it works in other languages, too – açaí is Portuguese, based on the Tupi ïwaca’i, and is also the name English-speakers normally use. And Australia is full of names derived from Aboriginal languages, that are also the names used by English speakers – lilly-pilly, wallaby, etc.
Exactly. I can be talking to a Spanish speaker about guineos and to an English speaker about bananas, and I am in fact talking to both of them about the same fruit.
With the caveat that a few Hawaiian plants that also occur in wider Polynesia actually have generic Polynesian names that differ slightly from the Hawaiian ones. Ti (Cordyline fruticosa) is the name used in most of Polynesia (and in English), but in Hawaiian, it is ki. Likewise, kava (Piper methysticum) is the general Polynesian (and English) name for what native Hawaiians call `ava.
It is important for each of us to be able to search for Our name for that. Only going to find it, if someone has added it first.
I agree! In my area, there are often three or four common names for a species - multiple indigenous names, Spanish, and English. The signage is frequently inconsistent even within a park. So I think it’s important to be able to search for those common names, even if it’s not what shows up on the final observation.
And those alternate names will only be there if someone adds them!
(Just noting that I’m speaking personally here, its not “official” iNat staff guidance. I was also born and raised in Hawaii, although I’m not ethnically native Hawaiian.)
I honestly don’t have too much to add to the really excellent points made in this topic. I agree that, with the way names currently work on iNat, if a Hawaiian name has made its way into common usage for English, it’s fine to add that name as an English name in addition to being a Hawaiian name. I suspect that the “inconsistency” @kevinfaccenda mentions is due to names like “koa” being in common use in English, and thus being added as an English name, whereas “ma’o” might not be (I’ve never heard it, although I’m not very familiar with Hawaiian plants, unfortunately). There isn’t any official guidance for this, but I think that’s what people usually go by.
I’d be for that, but I think it would only work for places like Hawaii or Aotearoa. Do we then create list of places where there is one indigenous language, and if a taxon has only one common name, in one of those languages, we display that name? I’d prefer a more universally applicable solution, where we show several local indigenous names, but then you run into design issues over how to display, say, 8-10 names in some situations. Not insurmountable, but it’s an additional layer of complexity.
I agree with @zygy that a deeper and more long-term solution is to start at the authorities level. iNat tries to base as much of its taxonomy as possible from external authorities, and and I think it’d be efficacious to have movement happen there.
Finally, I want to keep in mind that, as far as I can tell, all or nearly all of us participating in this discussion are a not members or close descendants of indigenous peoples (if I’m mistaken I apologize). I wouldn’t want to make sweeping decisions about indigenous names without consulting with the people who originated and use them.
Common names are just that, common names and will vary from country to country. There is no point for me, an anglophone, to try to learn a name in Hawaiian that means nothing to me and that I cannot understand … and, to be fair, the other way around also applies. The true names are the scientific names in the literature, anything else well, call things what you wish. This isn’t colonization, just common sense.
assuming one knows no name for this plant, then I would think Dracaena halapepe, being the current PoWO accepted name. There are some taxon swaps pending in iNat, and I can’t see exactly what the deal is, but I CAN see that @bouteloua and @loarie were users on at least two of the swaps… There may be a valid reason that either curator knows of why we might vary from the PoWO position, but it’s not apparent from the quick look that I took.
As for vernacular names, you learn whatever common names are in use by people that you are in communication with over this plant. Simple as that!
I think you missed the point as to what kmagnacca was saying. I think they were trying to make an example that there is no true name for any organism and that all names are human created and none is necessarily more true than another, be it a vernacular or scientific name.
Very unlikely that I will personally ever come across this plant so what “I” would call it is hypothetical. But the general naming convention is to stick with the literature. There are taxonomic shifts, splits and limps happening all the time as new knowledge is accumulated and better interpretations become accepted. “Common” names are just shorthand so use whatever the audience you are speaking to understands. From a quick read at the moment for this species then I would probably go with Dracaena
The problem is that that combination has never been validly published. The wikispecies page is incorrect - while the original combination was Dracaena halaapepe based on the incorrect vernacular name (which for some reason the plant code allows you to correct at any point), when Wagner corrected it (without noting that he did so) he simultaneously moved the species into Pleomele. When Jankanski moved it back to Dracaena he used the original epithet. So someone needs to publish a note correcting it to D. halapepe; until then the name doesn’t exist according to the rules of nomenclature.
