What does it take to officially assign a common name to a species? Do I have to be a scientist/researcher etc. to give a species a common name?
For example:
Giving Xanthorhoe defensaria the common name “Defensive Carpet”
Giving Orthosia pacifica the common name “Pacific Quaker”
Giving Operophtera occidentalis the common name “Brown-arched Winter Moth”
This is quite the controversial topic, with lots of gray area, but common names can’t be created by one person according to site policies. They should be generally accepted by the community first. Although clearly the name has to start somewhere, and I know lots of publications where common names are invented on the spot.
Can you give me a link / directions to one of these species naming publications?
For X. defensaria I already refer to it as the Defensive Carpet Moth in my head since it’s easier to remember anyways.
No thanks. I’ll stick with Ichy!
One thing I don’t get, I’ve seen common names on iNat that were removed in spite of (apparently) being a commonly excepted name. Like Abrupt Digger Bee (Anthophora abrupta), the fact that the common name is the same as the scientific kind of annoyed me when it was removed. Another was Bumble Bee-Mimic Digger Bee (Anthophora bomboides). Having common names really does help when I’m trying to help new people get interested in what’s outside.
That doesn’t sound as a valid reason at all, most scientific-common names come from latin names, it’s >90% names of plants and invertebrates, and common in birds and mammals, so they should be added back imo if it was the only reason to remove them.
There’s a good amount of previous discussion of this topic and surrounding issues on the forum that is relevant. Searching old forum posts is often a good place to start with questions like these as they may have an answer to questions or help to refine a question:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/just-how-does-one-coin-a-common-name/27506
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/common-names-invented-on-inat/27452
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/common-names-from-not-good-enough-sources/14976
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-add-a-common-name-to-a-taxon/9792
INat policy is common names should not be invented on the iNat platform. They should come from outside sources and have some history of use by naturalists, biologists, etc.
It’s fairly standard in biology to use a lower-case derivative of the family name when discussing the taxon informally—e.g… the cat family Felidae includes the felids. A dog is a canid.
Honestly I think the common name policy sort of falls apart once you start looking at it from a perspective that isn’t tetrapods or terrestrial plants. So many freshwater fish, aquatic plants, bugs, etc. have common names that just sort of come from nowhere, particularly with a lot of them just sort of invented by hobbyists and wholesalers
In my opinion those would be fine. As for the case for common names, I’m not sure that’s uniform even within iNaturalist—there is variation in use of upper vs lower case. Some of that depends on the higher-level taxon from what I’ve seen.
Here’s three from one paper:
And most of the common names in this book were probably invented by the authors. There are numerous minute, deep water, and otherwise infrequently encountered species that have no common names, but the authors assigned a common name to each one. Many are clearly just translations of the Latin.
I wouldn’t consider these “common names”, and their inclusion on iNat annoys me. I think of them as an easy way to say “members of __ family”. Dropping the ae doesn’t make them any more “common” or any more user-friendly for non-scientists. But some are used so frequently (especially for vertebrates) that people think of them as common names. As for capitalization, that’s in the site policy:
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#names
I similarly prefer to have common names at every taxon rank.
This is also something that has also puzzled me. Take the infraorder Helicoidei, with the common name Helicoid and Sagdoid Land Snails—an amalgamation of the common names from its two subfamilies, which in turn were derived from the scientific names. I fail to see how that name is helpful.
It could be argued that “Horrendous Space Kablooie” is a more memorable and descriptive name than “Big Bang.”
I really think that Calvin makes a valid point about empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder. Ramphastos sulfuratus makes you think of something that smells like rotten eggs. Meanwhile, the Spanish common name I learned for that organism is Tucán Pico-Iris, which translates “Rainbow-billed Toucan.” So what is its “official” English common name? Keel-billed Toucan. Why name it after the keel (or the sulfur) when the source of unimaginable wonder is the rainbowness?
The rainbowness of toucans. Who could ever forget that! Have you seen one / them?
Have you seen one / them?
Yes, in Costa Rica.
The bottom line is that not every user will be happy with the available common names for particular organisms. Where more than one name has been used outside of iNat, all should be available as options on iNat. If no common name is available, we shouldn’t be inventing them on iNat. But maybe the lack will spur the specialists in that particular group of organisms to generate a standard list of common names, as has been done for North American Odonata and some other groups.
Where more than one name has been used outside of iNat, all should be available as options on iNat.
If one of them is available, but not the default, is there a way to set it so that it is the one I see instead of the default? Assuming that it isn’t specific to a particular region.