The Right of a Fly to a Common Name

The Right to the Invention of a Common Name is the name of the topic. This:

at least suggests the possibility that maybe you would like to be the one.

There is a difference between marginal and marginalised and context matters. The bigger picture here is not some process of exclusion through which certain taxa are pushed to the linguistic margins. The process is quite the reverse, taxa enter the vernacular with common names by virtue of being noticed and talked about. “Marginalisation” is an active process that involves something being pushed aside (or at least it’s what it means in discussion of social processes).

iNat already has a bit of problem with people who game the system in search of whatever notoriety attaches to having the largest number of pointless IDs, etc. Why anybody would think they are being helpful or look clever by agreeing with an observation of Plants is unclear to me but it does suggest what would happen if iNat opened the door to people making up common(ish)/vernacular names.

To be clear, I love poetry and I love poetic common names. The wandering tattler is one of my favourite birds for no reason other than the name. But iNat is a learning tool for building understanding of biodiversity and it should be allowed to be just that. It’s a large enough task without complicating things unnecessarily.

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