Inventing common names redux

pmeisenheimer · March 30, 2023, 4:19am

Unless things have changed recently, only a curator can set a default common name. Curators act on behalf of iNat. Furthermore, the About page, adopted from Wikipedia, reinforces the default.

Indeed. But this is a topic that has been flogged - nay, hammered - to death on the iNat forum. An arbitrary selection of topics in which this subject figures prominently is at the bottom of this post. Some aspects of iNat policy are clearly stated; for example, it is not permitted to coin new common names on iNat. That, and a desire that common names reflect existing usage, even in a narrow context, emerge from a very extensive set of conversations.

It would reflect actual usage. The defaults currently displayed on iNat do not. One of the principle (if not the principle) functions of common names on iNat is to permit non-technical users to find things easily. Having people who thought they knew what they were looking for confronted by two brand new names is not a recipe for less confusion.

In parts of the Laurentian Great Lakes they are called dogfish by sport anglers and commercial fishers. They have other common names elsewhere. How does a suggestion in an academic article for a new name that is currently used by effectively nobody trump those names?

Say what? Respectfully, this is Humpty-Dumptyism. Proposed and existing are not synonyms. They’re not quite antonyms but one article proposing something does not equal that something’s existence by any meaningful standard. In the context of this discussion, common and vernacular are synonyms. These names are not vernacular. They “exist” now because iNat and Wikipedia have quoted the proposed names, not because anybody actually calls anything by them.

I have said this before in other threads but for the sake of clarity about where I sit with this, attempting standardization of common names is a fool’s errand. A Canada jay is a gray jay is a whiskeyjack, no amount of pontificating by self-appointed arbiters of linguistic purity will change that and which name applies depends on where you are and who you are talking to.

I propose that this is an instance of inventing common names through the backdoor and should at least be considered carefully. I freely acknowledge that the American Fisheries Society is probably going to offer an opinion on this and insist on some usage or another in their publications and that some people will see this as meaningful. I would also remind folks that other fisheries publications deviate enthusiastically from the AFS standard. My favourite example is the fish AFS calls brook trout and lake trout. To publish anything about them in Environmental Biology of Fishes you must refer to them as lake charr and brook charr. Yes, they (and others) spell it with two rs.

Maybe. It will still be dogfish on the dock in Prince Edward County.I don’t really care what anybody calls these things, although ruddy bowfin sounds more like an epithet than a name. I suppose I could make an argument for leaving Amia calva as bowfin being as how that’s how it’s going to play out on the water anyway, but what to do with eyetail bowfin? Beats me, especially since the putative ocellus is not a diagnostic character and anyway doesn’t look much like an eye on many fish.

Topic		Replies	Views
Common names from "not good enough" sources Curators	73	4664	December 13, 2022
How to add common names? General question	20	1363	September 10, 2023
Common names invented on Wikipedia General common-names	5	449	December 4, 2023
New Common Names For Species: Policy Change? General	86	2834	November 2, 2022
Website to propose vernacular names Nature Talk	2	233	February 16, 2023

Inventing common names redux

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