If one name is used by 99% of speakers why a different name should be shown on taxon page, observations, species list?
Well, the “spongy moth” is one use case. The name 99% of speakers use is now considered an ethnic slur.
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I do not know that 99% of speakers use it but I do know the previous name is a slur.
That said, if “gypsy moth” is a commonly searched for name within the area in which the moth is observed, the important thing is that if someone searches for it that way, that the correct type of moth be located.
So the common names should still include “gypsy moth” but because it is incredibly offensive and hurtful to those of Romani origin, it should not be the first common name that comes up, like a slap across the face, whenever there is an observation of that moth.
At some point, it is incumbent upon us to recognize that words have impact and offensive names are quickly falling out of favor.
If the important thing is for species to be correctly identified, that is a much better point to safeguard than the status quo on behalf of a hurtful common name whose widespread use will likely die out within a generation.
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i doubt more than 50% of english speakers even know what this species is, and of those who do most don’t care if the name changed
I think of you @jasonhernandez74 and @fffffffff as persons with incredible scientific minds, with deep understanding of how species are affected.
In no way do I think either of you is the original creator of that offensive name, so I cannot understand why holding onto it ( it is not even the scientific name!) would be personally important to you to the point that you would participate in harming others.
You have pointed out that nobody would be forced not to use it, that all common names used within areas in which a species is present are searchable within any language, which is important.
Is there some other species, whose “primary common name” has been recently changed that was not wildly offensive? A different example? I think there must be, because I am having such a hard time understanding.
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McCown’s Longspur to Thick-billed Longspur. Offensive in an indirect way.
I don’t really get the indigination. This isn’t really a bad thing. The ESA has existed for almost 130 years, no individual member of this community could possess that amount of collective experience over a taxa.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I also don’t really think this is a bad thing, I don’t think we should be naming things with words that are used as pejoratives for other cultures, despite how inconvenient adjusting to a new, and in this case, more sensible, more relevant common name.
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It seems like some of the confusion here stems from differing knowledge of how iNat implements the usage of common names. It could be useful to review that info here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#names
Also Tony made a nice tutorial of how some common name functions work here:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-add-a-common-name-to-a-taxon/9792
The original question was about designating new common names for species on iNat, so let’s try to keep the conversation focused there. There are several other threads that deal with common names that may be offensive, so if you are interested in discussing that, please direct the conversation there. If there’s a particular thread of interest, I’m happy to move posts from this one to there to keep the conversation focused.
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I do not know who McGown is or was but I can tell you straight out of the gate that “Thick-billed Longspur” gives me a lot more information about what I may be seeing.
If he or she is important to the history (perhaps the person who described it?) of the organism, that would remain with the species forever and is in no danger of being erased so help me understand what is imperiled.
PS: Sorry, @cthawley , we were typing simultaneously, you are just faster!
I don’t think anyone has ever legitimately been offended by that name and I not understand why that one of all the possible bird names was changed.
I don’t have an opinion about that name change. But it’s an example of one where the original name was not “wildly offensive” since you have to dig a little to find the offense.
There’s a very long discussion about scientific names in topic: Where Do I Start With Pronouncing Scientific Names? that’s a bit related and worth reading.
Personally, I agree with @rayray’s rant insofar that it’s worth learning the scientific names and maybe letting go of the importance of common names. Switching iNat settings to display scientific names first really helps with this.
Also, iNat’s user interface makes searching for taxa easy. You don’t need to type the whole thing and can type the scientific name, part of the name, or the common name. All three give the same search result:
- Heteromeles arbutufolia
- Het arb
- Toyon
Granted, the last may be easiest to remember.
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I dug into research and never found what made it offensive, hence my point.
I personally appreciate common names, and if there are none, i dont´t mind if someone invents new ones
and promotes the usage of them. If creatures are becoming popular, I do´t see the advantige in using sientific names outsight of sientific matters. As a matter of fact, there were a lot of common names in various languages for the identical beings, so of course also in swedish. Hundreds of years after the existence of swedish names a man named Linné started to invent new names for old creatures in a dead language!
Beside that this was a useful invention it just shows that common names came first in natural history. and i consider them as a cultural good.
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https://www.science.org/content/article/reversal-ornithologists-yank-confederate-general-s-name-bird
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a few of our plants have the Afrikaans common name
Juffertjie-roer-by-die-nag
Not awful because it is as if a young woman walked down the (evening) path, and left a trail of her perfume behind her.
Since we hike in daytime, that perfume is ‘what is says in the field guide’
Where Toyon is the ‘English’ common name?
But not in fact English, not so?
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How am I linked to a gypsy moth? Here it has a completly different name, I didn’t suggest leaving it, but I don’t know why the moth is called so, is it for the patterns or for caterpillars? The latter would be offensive, but if it’s for the looks I wouldn’t think so, but I guess it’s not, so, well, there should be a different name, if spongy moth is not liked, there must be different names. It’s called (in translation) unpaired silkworm here, so I can’t really comment on that situation, I don’t know it.
There’s a separate huge topic on human names as common names, maybe curators could move messages about that to it? Because this topic is off the rails now.
Yes, he was a confederate general. The civil war wasn’t just about slavery, and as far as I can tell there is no evidence McCown owned any slaves - he may even have been an abolitionist.
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