@haemocyanin11 If you like, I can merge your post into an existing discussion.
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I think you underestimate the scale of this ‘problem’ (insofar as it actually is a problem). Only about 5% of described species have a common name, and a sizeable proportion of those have several common names that vary regionally. The vast majority of species – many hundreds of thousands – have no common name in any language. There are 400,000 species of beetle, 50,000 spiders, 120,000 wasps, 15,000 ants, 5,000 aphids, 20,000 bees… I could go on and on.
Even if someone did sit down and come up with millions of new common names, that would only solve it for English. The English common names are as ‘foreign’ to everybody else as scientific names are (‘sound like gibberish’ as you put it) so we would have to come up with a few million common names in each of the world’s several hundred languages?
In my view it would be an absolutely gargantuan task with little actual benefit and several pitfalls. The whole reason for the need of a scientific naming system is because common names cannot be policed and enforced. Maybugs are known as doodlebugs or cockchafers, and commonly called maybugs, junebugs or julybugs in different regions depending on when they are prevalent. You’re not going to get anywhere by telling a community the thing they have been calling a maybug for generations is actually a junebug. Likewise daddy longlegs is the name for harvestmen in some places, craneflies in other places, and cellar spiders in yet others. These common names are ingrained through generations of usage in their respective communities. There’s not even any point discussing who gets to decide which community is right and which is wrong, because all communities will go on using the words they always have done.
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Which post would that be? When I checked the search icon, I could not find an exact match for what I thought about. If there is, I would gladly go it if pointed in the right direction. Thanks!
@haemocyanin11 this discussion covered similar ideas. If you feel you have a related topic / question that merits its own separate post, you can Reply as Linked Topic
It does not really make sense to dictate common names, though – because that violates the definition of a common name, viz., a name in common use. Maybe I, as an American, call it a moth fly, and maybe someone from the UK calls it an owl midge. And if each of those names is understood in its respective region, it is counterproductive to try to impose one of them as the standard in both places. This is why scientists use scientific names in the first place – so isn’t it redundant to try to standardize common names when scientists already have standardized names for their international use?
Now, a different situation entirely is where a person comes up with a descriptive name for an organism because they do not know of an existing name for it. When I noticed a certain kind of fly coming to ripe fruit, it just felt obvious to me to call it a “jester fly,” because that is how its colors and mannerisms struck me. And it turns out, it is a fly without a common name: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/38310684 So, should it be called a “jester fly” because someone thought of calling it that, and posting that name? The definition of a common name would suggest that it takes more than that: that “jester fly” would only be a common name if lots of people commonly use it. As such, “assigned” common names from ICN, ICZN, or ICNP are not really common names either.
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One point seems to fade in and out of this loooong thread: Common names help communication with the general public, even if such usage as “Douglas’ pogoyne” might seem silly or superfluous to a trained botanist. I have a background in science and I lecture frequently to a variety of groups. For better or worse, more often than not, the general public basically finds Latin binomials off-putting in conversation, lectures, or any casual communication. When I’m walking in my neighborhood park and someone asks what I’m photographing, is it useful and instructive to tell them, “I just saw a Petrophila jaliscalis!” or shall I say, “I just took a picture of an interesting moth,” and if they ask me what it is, I can tell them it’s a Jalisco Petrophila moth. I’m happy to speak in Latin binomials all day long, but it depends on whom I’m trying to communicate with. I think there is utility in common names (in any and all languages) for the purposes of communicating effectively with a given audience.
Oops, gotta go…I just heard a Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus outside my window.
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My take after this thread was that the term “common name” is often a total misnomer and in its current usage, highly prone to misunderstanding…
It seems to me like there could be a more nuanced and expanded terminology for the naming systems themselves, providing better support and acceptance for the full range of approaches, all the way from the more traditional to more progressive / transgressive ideas.
There was a nice thread posted shortly after this one, which goes into this aspect deeper.
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This is nice.
Seems to be in connection with this survey asking people to record the names they know them by.
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Sometimes a name may be something that just momentarily strikes someone, and then it sticks because they tell someone else that that is the name. When I was a kid in Rhode Island, we used to play with the marine isopods Idotea balthica, and I learned from another kid that they were “sea ants.” So that’s what I and my siblings called them from then on. But I have not been able to find any other reference to their being called that. When I Googled “sea ants” just now, everything that comes up is about jellyfish larvae, and the rash that they can cause. It might be that the kids who told me the name just thought they looked like ants, and named them that.
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What, no Buggy McBugface?
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Well, not too far off! :)
Not sure how many instances constituted a valid name…apparently this was from an informal magazine survey a while back. But there is also real research into it - from linguistics dept at the University of Edinburgh :
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-53308981
I like Crunchy Bats.
Bit like Mountain Chicken
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They got it down to a shortlist of four, and then decided on High-Noon Ant, which has now been officially adopted by ENTSOC.
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I used to go to a nature school, and one of the teachers called American Goldfinches (Spinus tristis) Flying Lemons.
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