List of sources for common names - wiki

https://www.plantarium.ru/ for Russian common names of plants.

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Opinions vary.

Mine is that if a name is in some sort of formal publication (trade book, published nature guide, herpaculture guide, guide on aquarium fish, garden book, research paper, website of an accredited institution, peer-reviewed taxonomic list, curated media outlet, respected insect depository, medical text book, etc.), the name has validity as a “common” name. If you, or me, or some random person on the internet is just making a name for the sake of personal convenience, than it is not really “common”.

The fact that the name is a transliteration of the species’ binomial name is not important - I am not an authority on what people call organisms and names derive from a wide variety of sources as is. I know some people, including some respected plant curators on the site, who believe names derived from the scientific name are illegitimate, but I disagree, or at least that is not the case for animals. For example, I have predominantly only heard people ever call the somewhat popular lizard Trioceros jacksonii “Jackson’s chameleon”. Its common name conveys almost nothing about it, which is a little surprising considering it is popular in the pet trade and males look like a small Triceratops. Regardless, “Jackson’s chameleon” is the name that has stuck. It is derived from its specific epithet, but that does not make it any less valid as a common name.

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@fffffffff, @leafybye, and @cmcheatle thank you for your contributions. I will integrate your suggestions within the next couple days.

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To me this does not automatically make them “illegitimate,” but it does make me question, is this name actually in common or vernacular usage, or was it just mechanically translated from the scientific name to fill a box in a database?

One way to get at this question is to ask a second question: if the species were transferred to a different genus, would the common name have to change also? If yes, then it is not a common name, it is a non-Latin scientific name.

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I can see where you’re coming from - and I hope I did not seem dismissive of your perspective. I think it is valid. My opinion is from the perspective of someone who primarily deals with animal taxa, where this problem:

is less rampant, so I apologize for my naiveté.

However, I’m not sure how easily a curator would be able to differentiate between a published colloquial name used in day-to-day conversation from a published vernacular invented by a taxonomist. I’ve seen both entered into field guides and related literature indiscriminately.

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Nothing to apologize for @bobby23, just wanting to clarify my own perspective on translated scientific names. And you are right, it’s hard for anyone to know how “common” a common name is if it’s not an organism they’ve worked with, at least without some research into sources. It’s when I see a name I’ve never heard of for a species long familiar to me that I get suspicious… :face_with_monocle:

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A checklist of Japanese common names of vascular plants has been published by JBIF (GBIF Japan Node) in 2019.
This is a synthesis of multiple national literatures, so that any disagreements occurring between checklists can be identified.
https://www.gbif.jp/v2/activities/wamei_checklist.html

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The Ontario species list available here has a lot of common names in both English and French. I don’t know about their quality or if they’re used elsewhere though.

Elaine Nowick’s Historical Common Names of Great Plains Plants is an excellent resource (despite the title, it includes many plants not from the Great Plains).

Indexed by common names:
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/27/

Indexed by scientific names:
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/28/

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