Your favorite common names that confuse identification

Nature Talk
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One perpetual battle when identifying organisms is that the common names frequently lead us astray as to the characteristics of the organism. They can be overly generic descriptions that fail to capture anything unique about the species, names that suggest the species is in the wrong taxonomic group, or host/habitat based names that don’t match the most likely host/habitat where the species really occurs. I’ve put together a list of my “favorites”, mostly moths and other bugs, since that’s what I identify. I thought it would be fun to have a thread of other ones we should be on the lookout for, so as not to be duped.

-Hickory Tussock Moth is neither a “true” Tussock Moth (Lymantriinae), nor does it exclusively feed on Hickory

-Laurel Sphinx has nothing to do with Laurel, but it’s Latin name “kalmiae” suggested Kalmia (Laurel) to whoever invented the common name

-Evergreen Bagworm feeds on literally hundreds of plants, and most of them aren’t evergreens

-Bog Bibarrambla is not associated with bogs

-Salt Marsh Moth is not associated with salt marshes

-Orange-spotted Idia does have orange spots, but so do a bunch of other Idias, so it’s not a great descriptor

-Gray Dagger Moth is gray, but so is nearly every other Dagger Moth. Large Gray Dagger Moth is also gray, but it’s not the largest of the gray Dagger Moths.

-Common Gray Moth is descriptive of the moth it names as well as about 10,000 others

-Burdock Leafminer is not the most common leafminer on burdock, and it uses a bunch of other hosts as well

-Maybe it’s my eyesight, but the Red-spotted Purple ought to be the Orange-Spotted Black-and-Blue

I’ve seen all these lead to identification confusion. Any others you’ve encountered?

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This thread covers a similar topic: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/confusing-animals-taxonomy-misconceptions/

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The damselfly, Ebony Jewelwing. Shouldn’t it be Jeweled Ebonywing?

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Great Egret - it’s pretty common. I mean, it’s ok but maybe not great.

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They vary a lot (sometimes red, sometimes more orangish). I don’t know if the name refers to the red spots on the dorsal side (which some RSP have), or those on the ventral side. The “purple” part is what I have the most problem with, but purple is a bit ambiguous, and different people use it for very different colours.

Also, we should remember that another (old) name for the White Admiral is “Banded Purple”. Maybe there’s some other member of the “Purples” for which the epithet is a better fit, and it gave that name to the entire group.

One of the more problematic common names for me is “Pink Edged Sulphur”. Pretty much every member of genus Colias has pink edges, so we get a fair number of misidentifications as a result. “Summer Azure” causes some problems from time to time, as there are other Azure species that fly in summer, and Summer Azures can fly in spring.

I have no idea where “Mulberrywing” comes from, but at least it doesn’t trigger any misidentifications that I’ve ever seen.

I think a bigger problem is Common names for recently described species that are just transliterations of the scientific name. Those really annoy me. Given how often scientific names are changed, they seem like trouble looking for a place to happen.

Examples:

Celastrina lucia => Lucia Azure (we got “Northern Azure” put into iNat as a synonym)

Phyciodes diminutor => Diminutor Crescent (which is just goofy, but we can’t point to any other common name in use so we have to live with this on iNat until I can establish a better one outside iNat)

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Our arum lily, is neither an arum, nor a true lily.

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Yeah, this are a problem. We’ve tried to avoid these for moths recently, with mixed success. A bad one is Epipaschia superatalis, which was briefly moved to the genus Macalla, got the common name “Dimorphic Macalla” during that time, and now is back in Epipaschia again with the mismatched common name being locked in apparently. I can remember all the Hypena being in the genus Bomolocha and having common names like “Baltimore Bomolocha”, but luckily they got wise and changed the names to “Snouts” in place of the genus name, so now that the genus has changed, the name “Baltimore Snout” still makes sense. Same with the Zanclognatha, which now have “Fan-Foot” in place of “Zanclognatha” in the common names. Orange-headed Callima Moth and Orange-headed Epicallima Moth are both in use for the same moth, depending on which genus the moth was in when the source made its common name list.

Another of my favorites is Acronicta haesitata, the Hesitant Dagger, and Acronicta modica, the Medium Dagger. A. haesitata got re-named A. modica, and A. modica got renamed A. immodica. So now the Hesitant Dagger has the Latin name that used to belong to the Medium Dagger, the Medium Dagger has a Latin name that means “not medium”, and the name A. haesitata from which “Hesitant Dagger” is derived isn’t in use.

Someone named Metarranthis indeclinata the “Pale Metarranthis” based on confusion between the type specimens of it and M. refractaria. It turns out M. refractaria is actually the “pale” species of the pair, but literally everyone on the Internet currently has the names backwards, with the pale ones being named “indeclinata” to match the common name. Someone will publish a revision of the genus eventually and they’ll all officially get flipped at that point.

This one is bad, I agree. C. interior doesn’t exist where I live, but we see preliminary NABA butterfly count results with zero C. philodice and dozens of C. interior reported on a regular basis, and I imagine it must be the common name messing people up.

And one more I find hilarious is Duponchelia fovealis, which was referred to somewhere online as an exotic greenhouse invasive in North America. It now has the common name “Exotic Greenhouse Invasive” attached to it on multiple lists, as if that was a reference to its name rather than a description of its status:

https://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/species.php?hodges=5156.5

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the genus Calopteryx is ‘jewelwings’ and the ebony one has black wings, but yes!

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I should bookmark your post so I can use it as a cautionary tale when somebody asks why we shouldn’t just transliterate scientific names.

There should be a rule in iNat explicitly forbidding it, to cover cases where someone creates a bad common name outside iNat, and then it gets ported into iNat (like a virus). That seems to be what’s happened with “Diminutor Crescent”:

https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/842955

As I understand it, iNat requires that common names have external precedents, but there’s nothing preventing the spread of bad precedents.

We flipped the process around for the Midsummer Tiger Swallowtail. We were informally calling them “July Tigers” for a while, but then we thought we should come up with a better name when it became clear that they started to fly in late June. I came up with “Midsummer Tiger”, and after we were using that name for a few years we got it ported into iNat (by then the name was in fairly wide use, though the species hadn’t been officially described).

When the species was officially described, the species epithet chosen was “solstitius”. So in this case, the scientific name is actually a transliteration of the Common name.

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To be fair, some philodice are frustratingly similar to interior (they lack the normal field marks that distinguish the two species). But you run across those once in a blue moon - that wouldn’t explain a preponderance of interior in a non-boreal location.

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The Black-headed Gull doesn’t have a black head but its lookalike, the Mediterranean Gull, does.

The Elephant Hawkmoth is only medium sized. Here in the UK there are four bigger resident Hawkmoths, none of which have a size based epithet in their name.

Hawkmoths
Hawkmoths1920×1053 272 KB

The Common Slowworm isn’t a worm, it’s a lizard that looks more like a snake.

The American Robin is a type of Thrush.

To date, there have been no cases of European Firebugs being implicated in the recent spate of wildfires across the continent.

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Nice! “Midsummer Tiger” was definitely a good choice.

Another recent success story is the Papaipema. A bunch of them had misleading common names that were sometimes just English-language versions of the plants in their Latin names, and the newest publication about them suggested new common names that better reflect their actual host plants:

P. baptisiae went from Indigo Stem Borer to Dogbane Stem Borer

P. arctivorens went from Burdock Borer to Thistle Stem Borer

P. cataphracta went from Northern Burdock Borer to Burdock Stem Borer

P. birdi went from Umbellifer Borer to Water-hemlock Borer

P. cerina went from Golden Borer to Wild Rye Borer

P. marginidens went from Brick Red Borer to Wild Yam Borer

P. aweme went from Aweme Borer to Bogbean Borer

P. sulphurata went from Water-willow Borer to Swamp Loosestrife Borer, as Water-willow usually refers to Justicia, and the moth uses Decodon

And a few changed the Latin name for the plant in their names with the English name for the plant:

P. polymniae went from Polymia borer to Leafcup Borer

P. araliae went from Aralia Borer to Hercules’ Club Borer

P. limpida went from Vernonia Borer to Ironweed Root Borer, while P. cerussata went from Ironweed Borer to Ironweed Stem Borer to clarify the difference in where they feed

So the common names now all reflect where the larvae are most often found boring, and the most common English names for the plants they use are used in all cases.

I wish more moth publications suggested consistent common names like this; a lot of what we have now is a hodgepodge of different sources that vary a lot in quality.

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I’ve got to say, I’m very grateful to whoever decided that the common name for Myathropa florea should be The Batman Hoverfly and not The Yellow-haired Sun Fly. It’s far more descriptive.

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There’s also a Batman Moth, and I find myself accidentally clicking the Batman Hoverfly by mistake sometimes. Who knew there’d be multiple Batmans. lol

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Dollproteas - not Protea but Daisy family;

Cape Gooseberry - not Gooseberry but Nightshade family

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We have two species of cedar tree here, and neither is a true cedar in the genus Cedrus. White cedar is a Thuja, and red cedar is a Juniperus. You would think all the place names with “cedar” in them would at least be named after one of those, but no, early settlers named most of them for hemlock trees.

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Yes, scientific names may change, but I don’t understand what is annoying about a common (English) name mirroring the Latin species epithet. Instead, barring those scientific name changes which admittedly annoy all of us, I feel the linkage of the English and Latin names usually provides a positive benefit of mnemonic association of the two. Lacking that mnemonic connection is when we get curiosities like “Red-spotted Purple” and “Ebony Jewelwing”, etc.

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Scott tried to do that with butterflies in his Butterflies of North America, but he didn’t get much traction with the new common (sense) names he suggested for many species.

If he had published it in the internet age, his names might have gained wider acceptance with the help of just a few key influencers.

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and the Cape, is not from the Cape that we know (way down South in Africa) but because the berry ‘wears a cape’ Goes back to the Incas.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/51988-Physalis-peruviana

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I wasn’t familiar with this species. Here is the range:

Screenshot 2026-08-31 at 12.25.12 PM
Screenshot 2026-08-31 at 12.25.12 PM1566×866 384 KB

Here’s the Batman logo on the fly:

Screenshot 2026-08-31 at 12.27.22 PM
Screenshot 2026-08-31 at 12.27.22 PM1104×702 123 KB

Compare:

Screenshot 2026-08-31 at 12.28.26 PM
Screenshot 2026-08-31 at 12.28.26 PM1490×852 87.6 KB