The Right of a Fly to a Common Name

Walking yesterday, observing flies, someone stopped to ask me what I was photographing. Maybe I’m just a little more coy than others, but for me, rightly or wrongly, I tend to be careful in how I respond. Even though I was observing Tachinids and other flies more broadly, I told this person I was actually observing hover flies. Because,

  1. The general term flies and the perception of flies is exceptionally negative.
  2. The term hover-flies is likely the only fly family they will have heard of without a negative connotation.
  3. There are no common names for the flies I was actually observing and very few common names for species of flies in general.

To my mind, shared cultural experiences of common names and our language around life-forms totally enforces, reinforces and manipulates our perception of them. As a child in the countryside, I could name many plants, most birds, most trees in my vicinity and had a connected awareness. I could name some fly families perhaps…but certainly no genera or species.

If we can only speak of flies on flowers as generic “hover flies” without even realising there are hundreds of different species of hover fly to see… don’t you think this impacts our awareness of biodiversity?

maybe!

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I make up common names all the time in conversation for that reason. There’s just a difference between doing that and solidifying it on iNat.

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Shared cultural experiences shape perceptions of pretty much everything. Part of the shared experience is the things we talk about and the things we don’t talk about.

Which is the foundation of vernacular names. Have enough conversations with enough people and the name becomes common.

Of course it does, but not in the mushy way posited by postmodernism. There is an interplay between culture and perception that moves in both directions. When we name things we see things differently. When we see things we name them.

I know the names of a miniscule fraction of the number of species (by whatever definition). Knowing that I not only don’t know but that I can’t possibly know and accepting that is a central feature of my view of the universe. It enforces a humility whose lack is one of the most significant cultural threats to biodiversity.

The idea that we should name everything is hubris.

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If I were to make up a name for tachinids, I would call them “bristle flies”. It turns out, there’s a source on the internet using that as a name for the family and someone’s already added it to iNat. It’s just not the default name, so it’s hidden. I won’t disagree that “tachinid flies” or “tachinids” are used much more commonly, but I’d be in favour of changing the default with the argument that those are basically still the scientific name. I’ll try it and see.

I think that progression from abbreviating the scientific names to at least having an English name for the family is helpful, since for most flies the average naturalist is lucky to even be able to recognize them to family level. I’m not sure if there is anything to be done about an aversion to the names “blow fly” or “flesh fly” though…

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In my opinion:

No, making up common names is against the rules.

Common names are what is accepted for a certain language or regional group. It is not what one person made up so that others learn to accept it.

For example, many Americans call crane flies ‘mosquito eaters’. This is then, an accepted common name for Americans. However, I’m not sure even a dozen Americans know about some springtail species - so theoretically I could make up a common name and nobody would know the difference. This is against the idea of a Common name though, and totally … just twisted.

A Common name, on iNaturalist, is used for people to find the species more easily. For example, a new iNatter (using the example earlier), may observe a Crane fly and type in ‘mosquito eater’. Sadly, iNat does not have this common name in Tipulomorpha, and thus the user would become perplexed. makes mental note to add that

Another example - the default Common name of the Elk was changed to Wapiti. Nobody in my area calls it that, including me. But we were still given the choice of Elk and it displays when you type that in. :)

I have a suggestion, though. I think, if you describe a new species, you can name it yourself :wink:

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Bristle flies seems like a good name for Tachinids to me!
I’ll ask @chrisrap about these, I wonder what other names they have had over the years.
A writer friend of mine described Nowickia ferox as being like a grumpy old lady with a handbag which I always thought rather wonderful.

I actually collected specimens of a new species here which needs describing at present.
As it happens - a springtail. But… again, as mentioned above, this is really not about my personal right. I am not interested in having the right for me alone to name creatures! That would be weird.
Maybe I need to change the title of this thread.

Here’s what I’m hearing:

EITHER

  1. Common names are ok if they come from shared community spaces - in which case, a community of people online is as valid as any other offline community in my book.

OR

  1. Common names should only come from experts and naming committees.
    The logic of this invalidates the notion of real common names which have evolved within communities.

I haven’t suggested this either. This is hyperbole.

I think common names as far as iNat are concerned is just anything that is actually used outside of iNat.

The idea is to have the list of names on a taxon to be as small as possible, while including all such names that someone might go looking for a particular taxon by…

as far as creating names, preferably don’t… save the size of that list to be taken up by actual already in use names, and if there is none, then that is great! Binomial names should be used wherever possible and practicable!

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I get the point of having a shared system and marker for taxonomical purposes - I don’t see a benefit in actively choosing not to have a common name to relate to the general public though. What would be the benefit to that? A binomial name is just a construct in another language. Just one which nobody understands. For the general public, it may as well be whimsy.

If the general public haven’t already come up with their own through necessity, then there isn’t a need, per se?

And if science (and to a degree this can include iNatters) has a need to communicate with the general public over it, then there will be no confusion to call it by it’s binomial. If the general public ask “what’s it’s common name” you can explain that it doesn’t have one, only the scientific name, as it is not an organism that is talked about much. Mission accomplished, and without creating names and adding to the confusion that exists around them… If the general public then go on to continue conversation on it, a common name might naturally appear from that, in which case it becomes acceptable to document that to prevent any future confusion over the names…

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Ok. So the new creation of a common name by a community is fine for you?
Do you mean offline only? Or online ok too?
If online ok, where are the limits around online communities?
If a bunch of people on Flickr start naming it as something, is that acceptable?

So for you, common names can only arise through necessity?
How do you define general public?

Ah, yes, the poetically named “Common Angle” (Macaria aemulataria)…

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Getting too focused on the intricacies of the law, I think.

If I see it being used by others in anything other than a flippant off-hand manner, and have reasonable expectation that it might be used outside of that group, then I would consider it in common use.

This might illustrate my point… I just went through a small “photographic pocket guide” of NZ spiders that has a photo and brief description of some 80 spiders most commonly encountered by the general public. Of those, 49 have a common name shown, and 32 only have binomial names. Many of the common name ones are actually several species that are all referred to by the same common name, and in some cases the common name is actually the genus or family name! I see no need to create common names on any in this book, and then there are also the other 1100 or so species that are likely to exist in NZ that for the most part don’t have common names because they are not commonly encountered by the public. There has been no talk of any campaign to create common names for them, nor is there any indication of a need for it. Then there is the estimated 2000ish species in total, so maybe another 900 that don’t even have binomial names yet (although some can be put to family or genus at a tentative level).

Butterflies tend to have common names more often than moths, largely because they are more often day flying and noticed by the public. They are also often the subject of prose and painting, so tend to receive more “arty” common names! Of course, not always!

I just think that we that record the names, should not be creating the names… I’m thinking along the lines of those who recorded early contact with Maori, and in particular the language… to “suggest and record words and meanings that are not actually present in the culture” would be frowned greatly on… and I see this common name issue being similar…

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Ok, but so an online community though is acceptable potentially?
This is not just offline?

And you are not ok then with experts inventing new names?
(as that goes against the idea in your final paragraph)

I’m assuming you’re being sarcastic? :slightly_smiling_face:
But I don’t mind the name Common Angle. Its not without poetry to me.

There’s more poetry in British moth names than the few British fly names at least.

Random recent moth trap finds :
Pebble Prominent, Dark Arches, Slender Brindle, Riband Wave, Scalloped Oak, Rosy Footman…

Not being sarcastic, but teasing a bit. There are a lot of great and evocative names for butterflies and moths, and there are a lot of pretty bland ones too.

The same is true of most animals, plants, microorganisms, etc.

The only ones that bother me though are the ones named after a person.

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:+1:

How about flies?

With respect, you are lamenting the fact that invertebrate taxa don’t receive the same treatment as what you describe as cute and cuddly creatures, which all have common names. If you want equal treatment you want names for everything. That’s not hyperbole it’s simple logic.

Cheers.

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Yep, those too.

Remember, common names are given to, well, commonly seen things. The smaller, more cryptic, or difficult to identify to a specific species an organism is the less likely it is to receive a common name of any sort.

If you’re really hung up on this issue just use the English translation of the scientific name. That way you get whats often an evocative, interesting, or amusing common name and you’re not inventing a new one, you’re just using a translation of the existing binomial.

Common names need to emerge organically, not in some planned manner. If there is a need for a species to have a common name one will emerge as people talk about it.

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Every galaxy doesn’t have a common name, astronomers who want to study or communicate about them do just fine. Every rock outcropping doesn’t have a name, geologists do just fine. Every gene doesn’t have a common name, molecular biologists manage just fine talking about them.

As was stated up the thread, adding something to Flickr or elsewhere and citing that as evidence of use is clearly trying to game the guidelines the site has established.

It’s impossible to define what external use means, but like Potter Stewart (history lesson for some) said about pornography, you know it when you see it.

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