Source of common names for Canadian species

Curators
1

An entity has been created with a purpose of creating common names for Canadian species.

https://www.wildspecies.ca/common-names

https://www.wildspecies.ca/working-group

An iNat user has identified several issues with the common names this entity has created and is requesting that many of them be removed from iNat. Scroll down near the bottom of the discussion on this flag to see a list of issues identified by this user:

https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/831593#activity_comment_78648db9-20c4-4bcd-9a79-126be96ed767

And here’s a flag on the family Salticidae with over 65 comments:
https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/699450

How do we handle these common names when flagged? Do we participate in a life-long whack-a-mole game of deleting them when they are added by people? Or throw in the towel and accept these common names, which are being propagated by multiple sources (including U.S. state wildlife agencies and NatureServe)?

I’m very familiar with the issues of common names (discussed in other forum posts), but the degree to which iNat curators are expected to police common names that are already in use outside of iNat has never been the focus of discussion to my knowledge.

I’m specifically wanting this to be discussed by curators.

2

Also discussed in the forum thread linked in the first post on that flag:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/curator-guidelines-about-made-up-names/53099

That thread went on for a while, and didn’t seem to have a satisfactory resolution. A fair number of people said “Yes, that seems bad.” (paraphrasing), and a fair number of other people said “Common names are good, therefore deleting them (unnecessarily) is bad.” (also paraphrasing).

The part that’s relevant to curators is that the only way (I’m aware of) for non-curators to get a name deleted is to create a flag on the species and convince a curator to do it. So, in this situation, where the same source has created many names which have been added to iNaturalist, each flag attracts the attention of a new curator who has likely never heard of wildspecies.ca, resulting in the same evidence and arguments having to be presented repeatedly. In my case, I think I’ve gotten involved with this same issue too many times, and I need advice on how to handle it better.

Is there a better way to handle this, when the bad names are scattered across multiple taxa, and each name is bad in its own unique way?

And, yes, does it matter if a name has been spread entirely by websites automatically copying all the names listed on other websites? Zero evidence of use by one human to communicate with another?

3

I want to respect Russell’s request by noting that I am not a Curator, so I am not taking part in the discussion. I am just sharing a couple of screenshots. @gpohl is both a Curator on iNat and an ex-officio member of the Working Group, so he might have some insights here.

On page 30 of the “Wild Species 2020” report (a federal document), we can see the rationale for creating common names:

Screenshot 2026-08-31 at 5.11.51 PM
Screenshot 2026-08-31 at 5.11.51 PM1694×722 62.1 KB

The beginning of the report shows the federal, collaborative nature of the report:

Screenshot 2026-08-31 at 5.13.23 PM
Screenshot 2026-08-31 at 5.13.23 PM828×1164 144 KB

4

This post from the 2024 thread still sums up my view fairly well, I think:

For names from wildspecies, the most common problem is that searching using Google or other search engines returns an order of magnitude fewer results than searching for the scientific name, with wildspecies.ca itself often the top result. In other words, adding the name to iNaturalist makes it more difficult for people to find information about the species, because if there’s a common name most people search for it first, and the scientific name never.

For actually common names, the situation is reversed, with search engines returning more and better information when queried using the common name than the scientific name.

Hopefully the reasoning above can be useful as a rule-of-thumb for curators who encounter flags about common names.

5

I agree that the names from this list are more often low quality than other common names. In multiple cases they are derived from incorrect “translations” of scientific names, and I think in at least one case a user asked for one to be deleted because the name was the opposite of one of the identifying characters of the species, leading to confusion (I agreed and deleted the name). I’ve seen several other instances where names from this list were causing confusion and they were deleted, and I agreed with those as well.

In general I agree that, if a name doesn’t serve iNaturalist users well, it should be deleted when it is the default name (often the case when there is no other name for the species). If it’s a not default name, in most cases I think it would be fine to let the poorly constructed name remain.

As far as

I think a possible solution would be that, once a name has been deleted from a given taxon, it cannot be re-added except by a curator. This would prevent names being readded after deletion (which is uncommon, but definitely happens), at least without some oversight by someone more likely to be familiar with iNat’s approach to common names.

6

With love:

How do we handle flagged common names?
  • Life-long whack-a-mole game
  • Throw in the towel
0 voters
7

Unless this is a new feature, I don’t think this is currently an option. Is it?

8

I think the wildspecies.ca common names are junk and I hate that curators are having to waste an inordinate amount of time dealing with these, and often having the same discussions over and over again. Ironically, I am a big supporter of commons names in general (as a concept) and I’m usually excited when organizations release new lists of common names. Those lists, however, are usually created by committees from organizations like the International Ornithologists’ Union or the American Arachnological Society and are based on real understanding of the species, what people call them, and what names would be appropriate to use. They are not created by someone just sloppily translating thousands of Latin names into English or making up arbitrary names based on a cursory understanding of the species. Personally, I think the wildspecies.ca common names are a net negative for the project and I would support banning wildspecies.ca and Natureserve (which just copies the wildspecies names) as acceptable references for common names.

9

That’s fine from a philosophical perspective, but what about the practical perspective? Can we differentiate the names that they created vs the ones that they found in use elsewhere? Which iNat curator(s) will be responsible for monitoring and removing names (and how will the bad list of names be identified and shared among curators)? Keeping in mind that more and more people will begin using these common names as the years go by, how far into the future will iNat curators continue to reject the names? Do we limit it to just wildspecies.ca common names? Or any bad common name…and how far back do we go? Bad common names created 100 years ago?

I think curators (and other users) need to get organized and petition wildspecies.ca. The problem won’t go away, but will only become more difficult to deal with if it continues. @JeremyHussell Google ‘online petitions’ and pick one. Get it rolling.

10

Petition them to do what, exactly?

11

I’m not saying we should ban the names. I’m saying we should require convincing evidence that the names are actually in widespread use, not just appearing in some generalist databases.

12

Clearly there is no simple solution here. In my opinion there are two classes of these recently fabricated common names; those that are simply mediocre, and those that are explicitly bad or misleading. The example of Pardosa distinct is not particularly offensive to me and there is an endless supply of established common names that are similarly undescriptive. But the example here that @JeremyHussell used is egregious enough that it should definitely be removed:

Names badly calqued from the scientific name, e.g. “Pink Orbweaver” for Eustala rosae, which is neither pink nor associated with roses. The paper which described the species says “Named in honor of Mrs. Rose Berlin of Salt Lake City who was a member of the collecting party.”

While I don’t particularly like recently concocted common names, they are insisted upon by the public and I do think it is a worthwhile effort for them to be established. It is probably futile to try and remove all of these, which is why I might suggest focusing efforts on names that are unquestionably incorrect in their etymology.

13

Languages, like species, evolve. Not always logically, from a meaning standpoint, but filtered through social, political, linguistic and technological changes. Sometimes known as history.

Even in seemingly hardened scientific Latin naming we know that there are many outright descriptive errors, or errors based on periods of temporary almost frivolous stylizations, linguistic clumsiness, or just honest ‘oops, now we know better’ technical errors.

Science is built on errors, often painfully corrected as it evolves. And that’s going on now faster than ever. And boy, is taxonomy a particularly active field for change.

Common names? Pumped through a popular citizen identification site hoping to spread and enrich much needed participation by the ‘commoners’? In a world that gets more fractious, more polarized, and… well… less common than ever before?

Should we pause, and work out some new ground rules? And where will we find the best leadership to avoid a Babel tower end-story? (Sorry, I know. The use of allegory is also crumbling)

Until recently, I’d have put money on the scientific community centre of global scientific research to support, design and start to build a workable solution to the naming problems. I grew up, like many, deeply inspired by this nation’s scientific accomplishments.

Now? Not so sure.

God bless her United Provinces of Ontario.

(Couldn’t resist. Sorry.)

14

Petition them to do what, exactly?

Well, that’s obvious, no? To be more careful in their creation of common names so that you’re not unhappy with the result. And perhaps to remove (or replace) particularly egregious names like the pink orbweaver.

15

Now you have to define widespread. What if they’re in use by three state wildlife agencies in the U.S.? (Yes, they would have obtained them ultimately from wildspecies.ca, but that’s the only way names come to be in common usage.) And what about a future where AI propagates unwanted (or invented) names? I see the problem getting worse, not better. More challenging for good curation.

Rarely encountered species, or species that people don’t talk about much, will never enter common usage as in magazines, newspapers, social media, etc.

To speak broadly is easy. To make policy, guidelines, and ultimately decisions is the hard part.

16

The whole term “common name” is dubious. It is some kind of vernacular name in some language, but it is often coined by someone who publishes a book about some group of organisms or similar. Only a small subset of organisms appear in common communication often enough to have any sort of actually “common” name.

And in case of many languages, like my native Czech, those old folk names are not actually the names that do appear as the Czech names in the iNaturalist database. Those are actually the semi-scientific half-official names from some publication or database. It even has the scientific generic name then epithet structure. And in some cases, like with plants, the names will even change according to the scientific taxonomy changes. For example, Gentianella ciliata used to be “hořeček brvitý”, but as Gentianopsis ciliata it is now “trličník brvitý”. One hardly speak about any “common use” here.

17

I noticed long ago that Czech had an anomalous number of species names (third-most for any language, exceeded only by English and Chinese), but never looked into it until you reminded me just now.

It seems almost all of them were imported all at once on 2019-11-22 by Ken-inchi Ueda from https://www.biolib.cz/en/taxondictionary/ Like most of these projects, they stuck their constructed names into their database alongside natural common names without marking which was which. Maybe a Czech speaker can figure out the story behind the creation of these names.

Don’t hesitate to add the old folk names to the iNaturalist database and make them the default names instead of these constructed ones.

18

These are really the names actually used in any contemporary literature, conservation laws and so on. The concept of “common” names simply does not apply.

The old folk names are mostly forgotten, even if they survive mentioned in some books. Even laypersons are used to the fact that the names of organisms are binomial, just they want the names in their own language, not in Latin. The process already started some 200 years ago during the revival of Czech as a language useful for everything and not just for poor people from the countryside (the Presl brothers published the Flora čechica in 1819 – 300 generic names coined there are still in use). A normal Czech person will want to see these Czech names that are accepted in contemporary (popular) science literature and databases, not some old names from old centuries.

19

It has two meanings, neither of which is “correct”, both of which are used currently.

Widespread usage sense: A name is “common” because it’s commonly used—well-known, familiar, established in popular speech regardless of language. Under this reading, “eagle” or “sunflower” qualify because everyone knows them, even though a name like “hoary puccoon” might struggle for the label since very few people know it.

Vernacular/local-language sense: A name is “common” simply by contrast with the Latin scientific binomial. Here “common” is about the language, not popularity. Any name in English, Spanish, Mandarin, or a regional dialect counts as a common name whether three people or three million use it—including quite obscure regional names that almost nobody outside a village has heard or a name coined by the person describing the species in a scientific publication and not used by anyone (yet).

20

@JeremyHussell Your thoughts on such a petition?