I have just entered my first 6 obs and noticed that 2 of the German common names are at least not common (Harmonia axyridis) or factually incorrect (Myocastor coypus is not a rat). Is there a way to request a correction?
Using the common names from German Wikipedia might be a good idea.
Cheers,
Walter
iNaturalistâs taxonomy is maintained by our site curators. If you find an issue with a taxon, itâs best to go to that taxonâs page on our website and flag it for curation by clicking on âCurationâ (under the graphs) and selecting âFlag for curationâ. You can then write a short note and our curators will see it.
Well, Wikipedia lists both âHarlekin-MarienkĂ€ferâ and âBiberratteâ as common names for the taxa in question, even if these are not the names used in the title of the entry.
It also isnât unusual for VulgĂ€rnamen to be taxonomically inaccurate â people call things by analogy with what they know, and Myocastor coypus is both a rodent and has a general resemblance to a very large rat. This is a different issue than whether the name in question is in fact used or not.
You can add additional vernacular names yourself if the ones you are familiar with are missing, although I think only curators can choose which one is given priority on taxon pages.
With German there is the complication of pluricentrism (multiple âstandardâ varieties of the language) and regional/dialectal variation â the most commonly used name in one region may not be the same everywhere. This applies just as much to animals as it does to pastries or certain vegetables (what do you call Vicia faba? or the root vegetable Brassica napus?).
For what itâs worth, âNutriaâ is what Myocastor coypus is known as in the area where I live, but âBiberratteâ doesnât strike me as particularly odd.
This is a chronic problem in English as well. The US Department of Agriculture makes up names for many plants without actual common names. Many of these are absurd and/or wrong and nobody uses them. But they get perpetuated on nursery websites, so Google searches make it look like they are in widespread use. In some of the ones Iâm familiar with, they actually do have common names in Hawaiian which are widely used in English in Hawaii. iNat has decided that USDA is the authority (and probably whatever the equivalent in German is), so there is not much you can do except set your account to use an alternate naming system.
Ive already tryed that for a really absurd name ive seen that isnt actually in use anywhere. The curator pointed to a single website he found that actually listed the name and it didnt get removed. Are there any standards the sources for common names must meet? Otherwise anything from some random corner of the internet will be accepted.
There is only one reference to âHarlekin-MarienkĂ€ferâ, which seems to be an Anglicism anyway.
There is only one standard variety of German, which is âHochdeutschâ. There are regional dialects, of course, but they donât count as standard, especially for written language.
The lemma in Wikipedia always refers to the standard name of a taxon, and regional names are given as additional information.
By the way, âBiberratteâ is particularly odd, because a nutria is in no way a rat, itâs not even rat-sized.
Es gibt durchaus mehrere Standardvarianten des Deutschen. Ich bezweifle, dass die österreichischen und schweizerischen Nachbar:innen mit der Behauptung einverstanden wĂ€ren, ihre offiziellen Formen sind nur âregionale Dialektenâ: https://bop.unibe.ch/linguistik-online/article/view/541/910
Die Standardsprache regelt auch keine Fragen der Wortwahl. Mir ist nicht bekannt, dass es irgendwo geschrieben steht, dass z.B. Vicia faba âoffiziellâ nur Saubohne oder Ackerbohne oder Puffbohne heiĂt und alle andere Namen nur regionale Varianten sind (diese drei Namen sind beispielsweise als gleichwertige Alternativen im Digitalen Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache aufgefĂŒhrt.)
Ob âkorrektâ oder nicht, wird âBiberratteâ von nicht wenigen Quellen benutzt, siehe etwa hier oder hier. Es mag sein, dass dieser Name weit weniger gĂ€ngig ist als anderen und in den journalistischen Quellen nur verwendet wird, um Wiederholungen zu vermeiden â aber nichtdestotrotz gibt es reichlich Belege, dass der Name im Gebrauch ist.
Es gibt darĂŒber hinaus keine Regel, dass die auf iNat aufgefĂŒhrten VulgĂ€rnamen Standardnamen sein mĂŒssen â soweit ich weiĂ dĂŒrfen auch regionale Namen eingetragen werden, solange sie tatsĂ€chlich von Menschen verwendet werden und nicht einfach von jemanden auf iNat erfunden wurden. Sowohl âHarlekin-MarienkĂ€ferâ als auch bei âBiberratteâ sind nachweisbar im Gebrauch.
Es mag sein, dass es sinnvoller wÀre, bei den beiden Arten einen anderen VulgÀrnamen auf der Taxon-Seite zu priorisieren. Aber das bedeutet nicht, dass sie per se falsch sind.
There are a fair amount of existing threads on the forum that address this and related questions that you could read through. Some examples:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/common-names-from-not-good-enough-sources/14976
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/where-do-the-localized-common-taxa-names-come-from/36860
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/inventing-common-names-redux/40451
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/scientific-v-common-name/32453
but many others as well.
I lived in Zuerich (donât have Umlauts on my keyboard.
Hochdeutsch insists on Zuericher but the locals say Zuercher.
NZZ?
https://www.nzz.ch/
Switzerland has many many German dialects.
âWater Ratâ is also an English common name for these fellows. Not used a much anymore, but still used often enough that people will generally know what youâre talking about.
Hi. Harlekin-MarienkĂ€fer is used as the common name of Harmonia axyridis on the websites of German government agencies (Umweltbundesamt), mass media (SZ, BR) and environment protection NGOs (NABU), etc. It might be its prevalent German name by now, possibly as the alternative, Asiatischer MarienkĂ€fer (âAsian Lady Beetleâ), is arguably kinda stupid. Also, Harmonia axyridis only arrived in Europe/Germany about 20 years ago and I sure am glad that iNat supports Harlekin in the ongoing process of establishing a common name. 
There is certainly nothing âwrongâ about the common name Biberratte (âBeaver Ratâ), it even belongs to the family with the common name Stachelratten (âSpine Ratsâ), Echimyidae. There are many similarly misleading common names in German, neither Steinfliegen (Plecoptera), Eintagsfliegen (mayflies) nor Florfliegen (Chrysopidae) are Fliegen (fles), for example. Probably for good reasons, what else would biologists and enthusiasts talk about with other people, if there were no misleading common names to clarify? 
Personally, I use both names.
There are official standards but the system is full of holes. People on iNat arenât supposed to invent names but any academic can publish a revision of a group in even an obscure but peer-reviwed publication and propose âcommonâ names and iNat will accept them pretty much automatically. It is no less arbitrary than an amateur proposing a poetic name but somehow more acceptable on a âcitizen scienceâ website if someone with a sufficiently large number of degrees suggests a misleading, dull and forgettable name in an academic journal.
There are no authorities for common names on iNat, but USDA PLANTS names were mass imported many years ago, so were the first name entered in a lot of cases. You can still flag them so someone can set a more appropriate name as the default.
As I started Inat, I found the name HarlekinmarienkĂ€fer very strange, as I never had heard it before. Only knew it as Asiatischer MarienkĂ€fer. - But, by time I found HarlekinmarienkĂ€fer is more correct to me, as said before, Ladybug from Asia⊠is a bit stupidâŠ^^
And yes, I call a Nutria Nutria, but sure it is a Bieberratte.
I wouldnât want taxon to change to asiatischer MarienkĂ€fer.
The problem is in many cases that there is no more appropriate common name to make the default. The only common names are made up ones. In reality many species are only referred to by scientific names, even by common people.
yeah, I know. I was responding to
And a Fledermaus is not a Maus, either.
German had several like that 
Schildkröte, WaschbĂ€r, Seehund, Walross, Nilpferd, Meerkatze, Meerschweinchen, âŠ
I find the German name âNosferatu-Spinneâ for Zoropsis spinimana utterly idiotic. It has greatly added to the public misconception that the bite of this spider is deadly. Youâd think it was likely to exterminate entire villages!
This mediterranean species is increasingly being seen north of the Alps, but didnât have a German name originally. It must have been some cinephile who concocted this one. Apparently the pattern on the back of the spider reminded them of the vampireâs grimace in the 1922 silent movie by F.W. Murnau Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. I canât see a similarity. Iâd have preferred a more appropriate name as proposed by researchers (essentially a translation of the scientific name, which in this case in my view was 500% better than vampires).
Alas, this silly name has in the meantime officially been accepted as the popular German name for the species â which makes for such great panic-spreading click-baits in certain media. :-|
/rant
Meerkatze comes from Afrikaans then from Dutch.
Doesnât explain why the Dutch thought desert animals were cats, that lived in the sea.