You have now entered the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Silly Names.
Commence silly naming immediately.
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Personally, I have zero issues with common names being ‘silly’, inaccurate, etc.
Common names are a reflection of how the average person uses the language and describes things, and that’s often imprecise (eg. the thingamajig, etc) and that’s not only fine, it’s something to be celebrated.
When we want (mostly) unambiguous precision we use scientific names.
Let society change the common names if there is social pressure to do so, and let iNat adapt to those rather than trying to drive the change.
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Similar to the ‘immigrant’ example above, I’ve posted in the forum before about the ambiguity of common names that include the word ‘introduced’.
As far as ‘silly’ common names go, one recent … frustration? … I’ve had is with common names that are just a rehash of the scientific name. The example I encounter most often is ‘Sonchus-leaf Crepidiastrum’ for the species Crepidiastrum sonchifolium, with the English common name not providing much benefit over the scientific name, and I seem to recall there being a few moth species that are similar.
A bigger annoyance was the proposal I’ve seen from at least one curator about adding English common names to species by going through Japanese websites and creating an English name from a transliteration of the Japanese common name – which is especially problematic when the species isn’t confined to just Japan.
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Any editor can enter a common name, although they prefer citations included.
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It is not. It is justified by arguments to the effect that it is too confusing to allow common names that are “wrong” in some way and they should be removed to avoid confusion, in spite of the usage being well-established in some region. I think this is wrong and have argued against it repeatedly. Nonetheless, it happens.
I know of no case where a name that was actually widely used was removed for being confusing, I know of cases where a different name was prioritized as default, and cases where people objected to confusing names but they were ruled too widely used to remove.
There also are cases of confusing names with limited use being removed, but not really widely used ones
For sure, personally I’m especially irritated by the ones with a scientific family name in them, especially ones that are no longer considered separate families (looking at you, Dogwood Thyatirid Moth – not that using “Thyatirine” would be any less of a mouthful. Once all the legitimately offensive common names are replaced, I’d favour just replacing all instances of “Thyatirid” or “Thyatirine” with “False Prominent” since they look like notodontids anyways).
Though on the flipside, examples like you mention, where it’s just the genus and species name flipped and then altered ever-so-slightly to fit English better, do result in some pretty fun ones sometimes IMO, like those Apamea species with weird adjectives in front of them.
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You were the OP in a topic where an actual case was discussed last year.
In that case the confusing but widely used name was kept and a different name prioritized over it, the widely used name was not deleted
I think you’re referring to a different topic. The post to which I referred was by a curator who laid out criteria that they argued justified forbidding the entry of a legitimate common name on iNat if it was likely, in the opinion of the curator, to create confusion. They gave a very specific example. That example still appears to contain no reference to the common name in question.
Well I always thought the Hoary-headed Grebe was kind of amusing. It sounds more like an insult that an eccentric character like Dick Solomon (played by John Lithgow) would use in that quirky TV show “3rd Rock From the Sun.” Speaking of such names, there is the Slippery Dick (Halichoeres bivittatus), but maybe now I’m just being a Sarcastic Fringehead (Neoclinus blanchardi). Maybe I should just Boops Boops outta here before I get into trouble…
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It would be relatively inadvisable to ‘remove’ an established common name. iNaturalist has the opportunity to be a universal guideline for prioritized and existing common names, but at the same time it’s not usually one person’s right to toss one into the garbage without really good reason.
There’s plenty of names that feel like they make no sense or don’t describe something well, but the stability of common names is sometimes more important than their accuracy. Exceptions would include offensive names, or names that are unpublished (with exceptions) or just plain nonsense.
Scientific names also tend to refer to a feature or locality that isn’t very representative of the species as a whole, this is nothing unusual.
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A possible solution would be to change how iNaturalist deals with “non-accepted” common names. At present, even if a common name is marked as not accepted, it will appear on the taxon page in the absence of other names. This could be changed so non-accepted names are not displayed.
The most egregiously confusing names, or those where it’s questionable that they are in use at all beyond some rogue editor on BugGuide, could be marked as “not accepted” but would still be available for search.
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For more fun with common names, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDHDfSP9Mvg at around 15:45 for John Acorn’s “I Could Be Your Tall Lungwort, Baby,” which includes the poignant lyric “When love gives you the Clammy Hedge Hyssops/An Early Yellow Locoweed you’ll be” and also “I can’t stand the Agrimony/It makes me wanna Milk Vetch”…
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Those new asilid names came about from a coordinated effort by a group experts to provide common names for all North American robber flies. The list and some commentary on the effort can be seen here:
https://www.robberfliesoftheworld.com/NA_CommonNames.php
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This is fantastic. That these names exist is clear evidence that there are people who take tremendous pleasure in the study of these little creatures. People need to know that what it’s like to do science or to be a naturalist is to feel this way about the subjects. This should be on billboards across the country. ;-)
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The “not-accepted” feature is only supposed to be used for scientific names. It is not meant to be applied to common names.
This statement isn’t really correct
The use of unaccepted to “strike out” offensive common names (such as in the situation of Spongy Moth vs. Gypsy Moth referenced above) is oked by staff.
This proposal
shouldn’t be done and goes against iNat’s current curator guidelines which proscribe coining new names on iNat. If someone notices any names that have been created in this way on iNat, feel free to flag for deletion.
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Right, I forgot it was the solution on “Gypsy Moth”. Regardless, outside of offensive names in special case scenarios, the strikethrough on common names is not intended to be used.