Yeah, the “European settlers naming everything after European species they were reminded of” issue is a big one… “American Robin”, “Tasmanian Wolf”, “New World Warblers”, “New World Sparrows”, etc. have little to do with the organisms already called Robin, Wolf, Warbler, Sparrow, etc. that Europeans were familiar with. I see misidentifications where someone enters something like “Sparrows” for a Passerellid, and ends up clicking “True Sparrows” (genus Passer), not realizing that they’ve picked a genus in an entirely different family.
We also have a sort of opposite scenario, when European butterfly species are introduced in North America, and the butterfly folks insist on giving them new names, when they could have stuck with the old names. Sometimes inserting “European” in there:
Small White → Cabbage White
Essex Skipper → European Skipper
Common Blue → European Common Blue
In every case, we could have just used the european name without there being any conflict with a local species. In the first case, the new common name might have been established before anyone realized it was actually an introduced species.
I had no idea that Cabbage White was an American name. Where I am (which is coincidentally, Essex) it’s a common term used to describe any white butterfly. It was only when I started on iNat that I learnt there where at least three local species and many more from further afield that this could refer to.
It’s a great example of the sorts of confusion we’re discussing here. We’d call small, large and perhaps also green-veined whites ‘cabbage whites’ (though the latter rarely feeds on cultivated cabbage, it does feed on brassicas). Only the small seems to have been introduced into North America, and yet it’s the large that’s actually called ‘Pieris brassicae’.
Oh, I didn’t know it was referred to as “Cabbage White” in Europe. My mistake. I’ve only seen it referred to as “Small White” in the European context.
So maybe that one is OK. Still, we don’t have an Essex Skipper or Common Blue, so I’m not sure I get why we had to invent distinct names for them. I guess we have the (European) Peacock as well.
Three of the most common garter snakes in California are the aquatic garter snake, the common garter snake, and the western terrestrial garter snake, and they can’t always be differentiated by color pattern. While aquatic garters are maybe a bit more likely to be found by water, western terrestrials and common garters are also water lovers and I’ve seen them swimming underwater hunting for prey. It’s pretty common for people to ID any garter snake they see in the water as an aquatic garter snake, for very understandable reasons.
Dolomedes triton, the “Six-spotted Fishing Spider”, has prominent but highly variable white spots on its abdomen, sometimes six, but just as often ten or none.
The spots referred to in the name are actually on the underside of the head, where they usually can’t be seen unless you’re looking at a specimen under a microscope.
This has confused so many people. “This doesn’t have six spots.” “Are you sure? This doesn’t have any spots.” “That looks like more than six spots.”
Edit: looking into the origin of the name, the scientific name of the species for a long while was Dolomedes sexpunctatus. It was superseded by the older name in 1924, with occasional further uses in publications into the 1940s. But the calque remains as the common name.
Thanks for that origin story! I love the Midsummer tiger name.
Sadly, I can’t tell them apart from the others, so I always have to go with “Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Complex” for my own observations, and leave it to savvy identifiers to figure out if my photos have enough detail to get to species (which they often don’t.)
To be clear, the reason you won’t have heard it much from European sources is because ‘cabbage white’ is used as a sort of colloquial ‘bin’ for several European species of Pieris (including rapae). It’s a semi-useful term for gardeners, but not for naturalists!
I think that ‘great’ means ‘big’ in this context. Like the dog breed Great Dane. (It’s a big dog.)
I’ve definitely gotten tripped up by common names like these before 
I often think that there is a secret ecological rule that if you give a species a vernacular name like “The Common [thing]” it will immediately become rarer whilst the similar one you’ve called “The Scarce [thing]” becomes commoner.
The Western Carp Gudgeon is a species of fish in the Sleeper Gobies(Eleotridae), not the Gudgeons(Butidae), it can be commonly found on the east coast of Australia and does not have the most western distribution of the genus, even among it’s close relatives.
There are the thistles that are not carduioids, and in some cases not even composites.
There are the daisies that are not composites.
There are the grasses that are not grasses, and in some cases not even monocots.
Greater and lesser celandine are in different families. So are rock samphire and golden samphire. So are dock and burdock.
Rose of Sharon has different meanings in the US and the UK. Neither is a rose. Shrub althaea is not a marshmallow.
Kalmia is mountain-laurel, which is in the heather, not laurel, family. It grows around here, and I’ve observed it.
I’ve also observed heavenly bamboo, which is not a bamboo nor even a monocot, but a relative of the nearby Mahonia.