I don’t know of anyone who actually says that names should not be used if they originate as trade names, what the people who are telling OP (I’m one of them) not to use trade names are actually saying is that a name that is used only on one dealer’s website should not be used as an iNat common name
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Agreed.
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Personally, I don’t consider it to be much different, and I’d agree with @pmeisenheimer:
There is just no reason to use common names (for uncommon species) in scientific papers.
That being said, I’d rather accept such a name than a name a single trader has invented: With trade names, there are (or may be) additional motives to naming other than just describing the animal. Either they are non-objective, complete nonsense, or they are misleading in an attempt to make potential customers associate it with something else. This issue automatically gets resolved when that name starts being in wide use.
Generally, not every name referring to a species is equal. For example, in German, a word for “dog” which will be widely understood, is “Wauwau” (a literal translation would be woofwoof) because that is for some reason what all grandparents seem to call them in front of kids under 5 years old.
I’d veto any attempt to list it as a German common name for Canis familiaris because iNat simply is not an appropriate place for “Wauwau” to be used.
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but, if describing a new species, that scientist could pre-empt discussion and offer a ‘common’ name which follows on from - this is a new species because … violet hairs on the third legs - so - violet haired beetle.
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I think it can be useful, but only for those country with pet trade. If you are from USA, common name should be applied to USA, but no for the rest of the world as pet trade is not common outside USA. In short, pet trade names (to me) is valid as a source.
IMO common should mean commonly used by a group of people.
i.e. used by a group of people
or published in a field guide
or published in a research paper (with referenced attribution).
If I were a curator I wouldn’t include marketing names or descriptions.
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A marketing team is still a group of people.
Common names invented by traders should not be accepted as iNat common names unless there’s actually some sort of broader consensus among the traders that reflects common usage.
The general trend with a lot of the common names that raymie submits that people have issues with (such as the wildspecies.ca list) is that they are invented common names that lack common usage.
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I think it’s all a matter of scale. My moth-nerd friends and I are a “group of people”, and we call Gymnandrosoma the “naked man-body moths”, because Gymn- Andro- Soma- literally translates as such from Latin. But I wouldn’t say the name is in broad enough circulation to qualify as a “common name” in the sense that iNat uses.
If one small company starts marketing a certain ant tomorrow as “red demon ants” to make them sound cool, I think that clearly shouldn’t be picked up by iNat and used on the species page. If 20 more marketers pick up on the name over the next 10 years, and it becomes the de facto way to refer to the species, there’s an argument to be made for using it. If even the field guides and non-marketing literature starts using the name over the following decades, then it’s clearly a fine name to use.
There’s no simple way to define what “common usage” is, so there’s always going to be debate about when a name is “common” enough to use. But if this is about a name a dealer recently invented and uses on their website that can’t be found in use anywhere else on the Internet, I’d say that falls pretty far on the “not in common usage, at least not yet” end of the spectrum.
I think the difference between this situation and that of a field guide is again, a matter of scale. There are something like 8 million copies of the Peterson Guides out there, and practically every naturalist in Canada and North America has used one at some point in their life, so a common name used in those is pretty much by definition “in common usage” because of how ubiquitous the books are, even if the name wasn’t in wide use before Peterson picked it up. The same can’t be said for a name invented for a very small audience on a single website. If there’s “only one source” for a name, and that source is a book used by all the enthusiasts on that taxon, that’s evidence of common usage. If there’s “only once source” for a name, and that source is a small website whose owner just made the name up, I don’t think that’s as strong of evidence for widespread adoption.
There’s also the issue of consistency in names. Obviously names change over time, but I’m sure iNat wants to avoid common names on the website changing more than they need to. I don’t know much about the ant-selling business (aside from the Monty Python sketch), but if it’s common practice for different vendors to use different names for the same species and frequently change them to improve marketing, it seems like these names would be constantly in flux, more than most other common names even, which is saying something.
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Williams, E. H., Jr. and L. Bunkley-Williams. 2003. Capitalizing the approved common names of species. World Wide Web Journal of Biology 8: 16 pp. [http://www.epress.com/w3jbio/vol8/williams/williams.doc] [294] ResearchGate+
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3-9 people using a name is not widespread enough to justify adding a name alone.
I do not understand the push (but wish to) by OP to use names like these. There are now probably over 10 flags related to common names of ants from ant dealers. I tried to find one I remember, “Oreos”. But the name is in such little use, you can’t find the common name when searching it on the web. Oreo ant, Oreo ant species, Formica oreas oreos. Even using the scientific name with the “common” name brings up no results for Oreos (except for Oreo products to buy). At least for my browser.
The point I’m making is some of these proposed names from single source ant dealers are on such a fringe case of use. You can’t even use the names to find the species. So why is there a desire to add names this obscure?
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Common names make iNat more accessible. The vast majority of iNat users don’t understand or care about scientific names. Many users quit when their observations are identified to a taxon that does not have a common name. Common names aid in iNat’s core mission to connect people with nature. This is why I add common names.
That being said I have no desire to break iNat’s rules, and only add common names I can source. I am constantly accused of making up common names and I can assure you I have never done this.
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I actually agree with this, common names really do make it easier for many people to understand, remember, and communicate about an an organism, I just don’t think the random names coined by dealers with no use outside that one dealer make sense to add. Some of these are misleading names, and all they do is drive traffic to the dealer, with no use anywhere else. Also, some dealers are shady, and should not be promoted
I do not believe that you have ever made up a name
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I would like to see a source for this outrageous statement
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I personally know people. To many people scientific names look outrageous, unusable, and unhelpful. I used to be among them, and tbh to some extent still am.
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I used to think this way when I was younger, and I still would rather tell someone I’m talking to in the park that I found a New York Carpenter Ant than Camponotus novaeboracensis
Btw do you mean unhelpful? it would be strange to find a name unusable and helpful
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Yes, fixed. ;)
Every time I read forum topics I learn new things. Ant dealers?
Who knew? Well some of you, obviously, but I thought the only people who kept ants were children who had one of those cheap plastic “ant farms,” in which you put ants that you found in your yard, and which of course soon died.
The idea of people signing up, taking photos of nature, uploading a picture of an organism they thought was cool, getting told what species it is and then going “ew this name is weird” and quitting is insane
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It happens all the time. Many people don’t even realize what they’ve received is an answer.