The first time I saw Clogmia in the bathroom at the community college, I called it a drain fly, because it was hanging around the drain in the floor. I later found out that this is one of its common names (of the family, according to Wikipedia).
When I read about Epomis, I decided they should be called frogbane beetles, and the larvae frogbane grubs. I sent an email to Gil Wizen, but nothing happened.
There’s a katydid I’ve heard in only one place, a planted traffic island in downtown Rutherfordton, which I recently decided to call “ticktizzick” from its sound.
I haven’t really made up any common names yet (except for entirely fictional clades I’ve thought up), but I have some possible ones for taxa I’ve either seen or are somewhat familiar with:
Entomobrya petri: Peter’s Rock Springtail (the species name petri is both Latin for “rock” and after the discoverer’s father)
Epiphragma ocellare: Eye-winged Cranefly (fairly obvious if you’ve seen any)
Crocota tinctaria: Alpine Saffron Dyer (lives in mountainous areas, bright yellow-orange, the related Crocota peletieraria is called the pale dyer)
Mesotype verberata: Scalloped Mountain Carpet (lives in mountainous areas, has “scalloped” lines on its wings, close relative is the Twin-spot Carpet)
Tipula confusa: Late Spot-winged Cranefly (“later” in the year than most of the spot-winged limoniids or Pterelachisus species)
Willowsia platani: Zebra Tree Springtail (several black-and-white stripes, associated with trees such as sycamore)
Antennophorus: Ant-hanger Mite (parasitic on ants, IIRC they mostly hang onto the undersides of the ants’ heads and steal food)
My family on my mom’s side calls house centipedes “combs”. I’ve also taken to calling Large Carpenter Bees (Xylocopa) “mailboxes” because they like to nest in our mailbox.
Yes, and in one case, the name I coined became the defacto common name for the species before it was officially described. When it eventually was, the species epithet was (effectively) a latin transliteration of the name I coined. So arguably, I made up both the common and scientific names.
The trick is to use your proposed common name when discussing the species with others. If it’s a good one, they may adopt it. If it gets used in a few publications, it can then end up on iNat.
Segestria bavarica: Quiver-backed Spider (has two parallel rows of triangles on its back, Arrow-backed Spider would suggest just two triangles next to each other, and a line of arrows is pretty close to its pattern)
Brugmansia: I call these Fairy Hats! It’s so hardwired into my brain that I have to look up Brugmansia every time I’m trying to use the “correct” name.
My hiking friend kept asking me the common name of Phemeranthus aurantiacus, aka Talinum aurantiacum. When I told her Orange Flameflower, we both agreed that the two "fl"s in “flameflower” were hard to pronounce, so we renamed it Orange Flamethrower.
I occasionally refer to skinks (Scincidae) as slicklizards because of their smooth scalation. Probably not original. I worked for a summer in the coal country of northern Alabama and used to drive through a small town called Slicklizzard. I assumed the name referred to skinks but not exactly … I’ve read that it actually referred to miners who, after crawling through muddy mine tunnels, ended up “slick as a lizard.”
There is an arrowhead orbweaver, which has one arrowhead-like marking on its abdomen (I suppose from the species epithet it would be sand-colored, but I didn’t get good lighting). It could also be called the rightside-up orbweaver. Most orbweavers hang upside-down.
I have given common names to many extinct and living species (see my journal posts and bio for an explanation).
One of my favorites is ‘Opossum Rat’ for Drymoreomys albimaculatus, which I think rolls off the tongue much better then ‘White-throated Montane Forest Rat’, and my name takes precedent (technically/not technically), as I invented mine before that one.
I love Oudemansiella Gigaspora, a rooting shank mushroom that is native to Australia. I think the name is cool but too long, and there isn’t really a common name. So I propose we call them “long bois”.
When I first encountered enoki mushrooms in a restaurant, I called them “funghi lunghi”. I don’t know how I came up with that, since Italian is not one of my native languages (French and Spanish are, but the phrase doesn’t rhyme in either). However, this description doesn’t match wild enoki, just cultivated ones.
I think solifugae should be called sunrunners rather than camel spiders. It accurately describes their behavior better, is truer to the etymology of their scientific name, does not imply an incorrect taxonomy, and it just rolls of the tongue better
Aphelinus thompsoni: Charred Sycamore Aphid-mummy Wasp (parasitises and mummifies sycamore aphids, the resulting mummified aphids are black in colour)
Syntexis libocedrii: Ashen-cedar Woodwasp (oviposits in burned cedar wood and it’s a sawfly, which are often called woodwasps)
Doddifoenus sp: Hmm… not “javelin wasp”, Gasteruption already took that. Not “dart wasp” either, that fits much better with Cameronella. How about “emerald spear wasp”, since they’re long, shining green and thin?
(An extinct one) Hoplitolyda: Mammoth Sawfly (well, it was about the size of an Asian giant hornet, and it’s also a sawfly)
(Another extinct one) Choshapraecursor: Texas Shrimp-Bristletail (related to archaeognaths, but likely semiaquatic, also found in Texas)
(Yet another extinct one) Titanopterans in general: mantishoppers (related to grasshoppers, also predatory)
And an extra-silly one:
Bremia krungthepmahanakhonamonrattanakosinmahintharayuthayamahadilokphopnoppharatratchathaniburiromudomratchaniwetmahasathanamonpimanawatansathitsakkathattiyawitsanukamprasitnonopsis: Almost-but-not-quite-entirely-unlike-Bangkok downy mildew (Bremia lactucae is a downy mildew, this species’ specific epithet means “doesn’t look like Bangkok”)
I actually read it as ‘Flamethrower’ the first time and had to go back and reread it to work out what those 'two ‘fl’s’ were that you were referring to… so, yeah, I guess!
I took up calling Cardamine pratensis meadow bitter cress, rather than the conventional cuckoo flower, milkmaids or lady’s smock. Principally because it was more easily abbreviated (“mbc”) in written field records.
We’ve got a number of potential new species of wolf spiders (Hogna genus) in Texas. We didn’t want to name them species A, B, C, etc. That’s no way to market a potential new species. The Big-eyed Hogna was already named. If you put the names in the notes section of an observation, the observation can be filtered. Another is the Sandhills Hogna which we named because it likes living on shifting sand dunes. There are others named for some unique characteristic which can someday be translated into Latin.
