It’s also used on really misleading sensationalized media names like “murder hornet”, but that is the only case I know of it being used on a non-offensive name
This would be too much of a sweep solution, as not all “non-accepted” common names are created equally. Plenty have virtue. Some do not. Admittedly the fact it can imply arbitrary decision is why staff took the stance about not creating common names in the first place.
The post above makes a great example of “murder hornets”. There’s now a lot of resources that call them this, but it’s clearly a silly and informal name that has about as much need to be on iNaturalist as “danger noodle” for snakes. But by some interpretations, that name now has enough use and acceptance to be more official than some obscure and poorly used common names.
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Sure.
Personally I’m all for poetic, ridiculous names …allsorts is fine by me too …but in this instance it’s just a bit needlessly confusing imo. I didn’t even realise this was a N.American name…and it’s a species I’ve seen in UK often.
In UK I would rather stick to no common name, have a UK one if it existed…or make up a new name for it ( contentious I know… but makes sense to me! )
But yes, UK sites don’t seem to list one…and now I see NBN (UK database) pulls info from Wikipedia… which has pulled it from iNaturalist… making it appear almost as if it’s a known common name for it in UK too… which makes zero sense.
One could also refer to really misleading sensationalized marketing names like “sea monkeys” – although, now that I looked it up, Artemia NYOS is an artificial hybrid that doesn’t exist in nature, so, presumably, any uploaded observations of them will be left at genus. Still, someone could conceivably search for that name.
Unfortunately, scientific names seem to be in a constant state of flux these days, so I find that in my area, I get more “unambiguous precision” by using common names for species. I know of species whose scientific name have changed multiple times within my lifetime, but if I use the common name, everybody knows what I’m talking about.
I’ve found that with some experts, a game of one-upmanship can almost be perceived where it’s a point of pride that one person knows the most up-to-date scientific name for something. I know of one so-called expert who seems to make a point of switching the scientific name he’s using for a particular entity multiple times during the same missive, just to make the point that he has been looking at the entity in question for a long time (or some other obscure point). I go out of my way to use common names when corresponding this this clown just to make it clear that I ain’t impressed, and feel no need to participate in this game. All I want is for the other people participating in a discussion to understand what entity I’m talking about. As I said, I typically find that’s most easily accomplished using common names, but that may not be true when dealing with other taxa.
Oh, and you can coin a common name for something that is not yet officially described (and so, doesn’t have a scientific name yet). I coined a common name for one of our local proto-species, and we’ve been using it extensively now for almost a decade (there was another name, but when it became apparent that this was a real thing, a group of us were discussing alternative names, and the one I came up with ended up sticking). It’s use seems to have spread outside our circle, but because this entity isn’t officially described yet, it’s not on iNat. I expect that when it gets officially described, the common name I coined will be adopted on iNat, because it’s already in use. That seems like a reasonably organic process to me.
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What makes you think that day will ever come?
(Offense appears to be a 100% renewable resource. Indeed, it’s pretty much the only one that’s actually becoming more abundant as time goes on)
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Hence why I inserted ‘mostly’ into the line.
I fully agree that in many cases common names have more utility, that’s a case I’ve argued here in the forum in the past as well, and part of why I’ve been outspoken both about retaining common names on iNat and not arbitrarily changing them on iNat.
And, yes, you can potentially coin a common name, but that’s not allowed on iNat. If you coin it out in the wild and it gets adopted by society, then iNat can adsorb it, and that’s all perfectly fine.
The issue is when iNat users decide to try to do this on iNat instead.
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By any interpretation predicated on standard English syntax as employed in iNat policy, any such common name has as much merit as any other. That the policy is ignored in arbitrary ways speaks only to the fact that it really needs to be revised. It is not the only such evidence; chief among the supporting arguments is the accumulation of dreary, misleading and geographically incoherent names drawn from sources that iNat, for reasons that make no sense at all, considers official arbiters of vernacular nomenclature.
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This is an argument about common names in general, from where I am standing, and so it remains an unsolvable problem with a defined scope well beyond iNaturalist.
As we in California still live with Simmondsia chinensis and co, plants commemorating entire countries that are unrelated to where they truly occur due to historical mistakes.
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In fairness, that can happen with common names, too. Aglaonema is known as “Chinese evergreen,” when most species do not occur naturally in China.
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As is very well known, but less people realize that scientific names also have pitfalls with poor naming, description, or incorrect localities!
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this functionality already exists on iNat, you can implement it under your profile settings (and indeed if you want, you can remove the display of common names entirely)
this is also something that has already existed on iNat for many years, there are thousands and thousands of species on iNat with more than one common name
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Sometimes, common names are the basis for scientific names. The fish formerly known as Agonostomus monticola has the common name dajao in Spanish-speaking countries. When it was moved to a new genus, that new genus was named Dajaus.
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That is great–was not aware of this list. Quite the effort for the ~1,000 North America Asilids.
Hard to see it ever happening for all NA Diptera (~17,000) spp.
Coleoptera is said to have about 28,000 NA species, many undescribed.
Perhaps it can happen one family at a time, starting with some of the more charismatic and less speciose groups.
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