Translation of animal names

I am looking for information on local (official and alternative) animal names in different European languages (mainly for mammals and reptiles).
Sometimes I find translations via wikipedia, but for some languages there is no page for certain species.
Are there other sources that I can consult?

Are you interested in those that lack names on iNat? Cause many animals have many names in different languages in iNat system and can be seen in taxonomy tab.

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I try to include as many european animals as possible in the system that I am building, with the local names in the languages we support (10 at the moment; more in the future)
For some languages it is difficult to get information (f.i. portuguese, danish …)

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So do you check iNat database or not? I quite regulary add European names for birds, but it mostly includes languages of countries where iNat is less popular, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, etc. And there was a separate theme or two about resources to find common names in bulk. It really depends on which animal group you’re interested in, vertebrates have more common names added.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/list-of-sources-for-common-names-wiki/10249
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/reliable-sources-for-common-names-on-inaturalist/5579/13

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https://old.observation.org/download.php?lang=en&local=xx I guess you already new about this resource cause Belgium is one of the main users.

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I found some missing translations here. Thanks.

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Didn’t know this . I’m going to explore this. Thank you.

Pretty much any Danish name can be found here.
https://www.allearter-databasen.dk/

But there is no master list, you have to search within the family / area of interest.

If you cant figure out the Danish text, reply and I will guide you (I’m a Danish speaker)

I found some missing names here , but for other species there may be no local name. (I was looking for a danish name for Sorex coronatus ).
Anyway , thank you for the link ; it will be usefull in the future :slightly_smiling_face:

Rather than using Wikipedia, I would suggest Wikidata.
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page

There will be far more entries for smaller languages there than there are created Wikipedia pages for those taxa.

You can either look up a single species, look for the Taxon Common Name section.

Or alternatively you can query the database (Wikidata is the structured database for Wikimedia projects, so effectively it is a giant database) and see all common names that have been entered for any language by following this link :

https://query.wikidata.org/#SELECT%20%3Ftaxonname%20%3Fcommonname%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ16521%20%3B%0A%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20wdt%3AP225%20%3Ftaxonname%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20wdt%3AP1843%20%3Fcommonname%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20FILTER%28LANG%28%3Fcommonname%29%20%3D%20%22da%22%29.%20%20%20%20%20%20%0A%0A%20%20%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22en%22.%20%7D%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%7D%0AORDER%20BY%20%3Ftaxonname

This lists for example all entered common names in Danish. You can change the language by just changing the two letter code in the filter section when you get to that page (it will open a query tool where the above is shown in more readable format).

I’d also encourage you if you find names not in Wikidata to add them, you dont even need to create an account.

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Many thanks for the links. Very usefull to find local names in different languages.

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