Hi I have observed some of the mushroom Oudemansiella gigaspora and noticed there are a lot of them around (3,470 observations on iNat). If I can’t make a common name on iNaturalist then how could I make one for the species?

[image] deanhester94: never made sense. Using the latin root is probably the safest bet, especially when it directly relates to a physical description of the organism. As is the case here Common names exist because before Linnaean taxonomy was a thing, and even AFTER it was, different people,…

[image] deanhester94: Red Panda, Giraffe, Anaconda, Horse. What do any of these mean? Do these words make sense? Or for that matter, Oak, Maple, Yew, Willow. Or (in another language) Guarumo, Guacimo, Jobo, Gri-gri, Guanacaste. Each of these words has no other meaning than the respective tree…

I think @grampianshiker has said what I was going to. @davidp_newton , the reason I started this post is because I told someone that this fungus is called Oudemansiella gigaspora and they had a hard time trying to pronounce it. I am not going to to try and make it a common name, I will just share the…

Yes, the utter unpronounceability of too many scientific names is one good reason for having common names, even if only for yourself. And if they become more widespread, all the better! :-) (Yes, speaking as someone who has rarely heard any of the scientific names I know actually pronounced, and th…

[image] grampianshiker: difficulty I also have in remembering spellings Me too!

Thankfully for ones like Myxococcus llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochensis that have no common name, you can find them on iNat with just the leading letters of the name, in this case “my llan”. Remembering only the first few letters is a lot easier than knowing the whole nam…

Oudemansiella = weed-man-see-la. It is a tricky one. All said though, some people get touchy about scientific name pronounciation but IMHO it doesn’t really matter. Latin is a dead language, if the pronunciation isnt quite it’s okay, Romans are not going to climb out od their graves to correct us.

This is Dutch. I think oude (odour for English pronunciation) man (with a short a) = old man .

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneille_Antoine_Jean_Abram_Oudemans Named after this Dutch botanist, apparently. The pronounciation i gave is basically how every mycologist I have talked to says it - it is a weird one though for sure.

Making a common name for Oudemansiella gigaspora

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Making a common name for Oudemansiella gigaspora

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