English Names

[Roger C. KENDRICK]

John, Andrew, Anne, ...

I guess my initial response triggered the rest of the messages, but there are
some points here I'd like to expand upon as briefly (well, not very) as
possible:

John Acorn wrote:

> Some further thoughts,
>
> I hesitate to engage this group on a sensitive issue, but I can't help but
> feel that debates that continue to pop up are still worth pursuing.  It's
> not the "same old debate" if one makes progress in resolving it.

True indeed

> ........
> I subscribe to a few others, on entomological topics, and I am frequently
> distressed at the lack of intelligent guidance among this group.  There seem
> to be no senior voices of reason and wisdom, or if they do appear, they do
> so briefly and tentatively.  Are these people tired of getting beat up for
> trying to help?

Could be!

>  It seems that we have, in some way, created a subculture in
> which everyone involved feels perfectly justified in assuming that they know
> better than everyone else.  I'll try hard to avoid falling into this
> category, and I hope you all will too.  I'm on this list to learn things by
> sharing ideas, and I can't think of another good reason to be here.

These are problems one has to put up with - Lepidoptera (principally
butterflies) are probably the most well known group as a whole to the
non-entomologists and thus this list is liable to sometimes have either somewhat
ill-informed or poorly researched ideas resulting from "knee-jerk" observations
. Even so, these act as initiators for further, hopefully better considered,
debate. The "sharing" part comes into play here. I guess that everyone feels
their point of view should count; the hard part is being honest enough to accept
when one's viewpoint is shown to be invalid. In the current thread, Andrew has,
to his credit, openly replied that he didn't have all the info to hand when he
posted the list of species from his trip to Portugal.

Dissemination of original information (such as a list of species observed on a
field trip) is also a crucial part of Leps-L, but having the information posted
in as userfriendly manner as possible (i.e. properly researched) is beneficial
to both the supplier (who should make sure the information is as correct as
possible and not open to misinterpretation) and to the consumer (be it for
general interest or to further a specific research goal). I, personally, would
rather see a species list that has been fully written up with both vernacular
and scientific names in some kind of systematic order (such as alphbetically
within family / subfamily) than an unsorted list of either vernacular or
scientific names (unless no vernacular names are in general use for that
particular species). It must not be forgotten that to the novice Leps.
enthusiast (a stage we ALL go through) the sight of a species list written only
in scientific notation is very daunting - I'm all for having vernacular names to
break this initial barrier (but will have to invent some 1600 names for the H.K.
species, so please excuse me if I stick to just the scientific names for the
time being!). Bringing some kind of order further aids the novice - seeing
species grouped according to families helps to create a clearer picture of
species classification and helps put things in perspective for unfamiliar
faunas.

> Which brings us back to English names.  For years, North Americans have put up
> with a continual stream of field guides in which each new author felt
> empowered to invent new names if they saw fit......<snipped>......Not that I
> am faulting Jeff or Norbert personally-- I am simply using them as examples of
> what I see as a general problem.
>
> ........  Individual birders don't seem to feel that they have the right to
> decide personally what is an is not a "good species," but they still enjoy
> discussing individual instances where the topic is poorly resolved.
>
> So how did this problem arise among lepidopterists?  I'd be interested in the
> views of those who have been at it for longer than me (ten years seriously,
> but with a lifelong interest that started 35 years ago), but I suspect it is
> the result of a scientific community that does not take English names
> seriously, and therefore never set up the equivalent of the AOU names for
> birds.

Your comments about the wranglings of American vernacular name lists would give
plenty of grounds for this suspicion! Bear in mind, though, that birding has had
a much longer *popular* recreational history and that in itself gives more time
to discuss and iron out differences of opinion. Butterflies in the UK have had
their vernacular names for several centuries also (in most cases), which may
account for their relatively stable nature. UK moth names are also several
centuries old; were sparingly used among a small circle of moth enthusiasts and
so stayed stable and remain so in more popular times as they are well
documented.

>  Sadly, what this community has offered instead is a distressingly unstable
> set of Latin names, hardly worth the effort for the non-lepidopterist, and at
> this point, hopelessly confusing to almost all of us, whether we admit it or
> not.

Agreed, in part. However, good taxonomists publish fully synonymised checklists
which allow for full cross-referencing of scientific names. This practice isn't
carried out sufficiently well on a broad scale to have ironed out the problems
(and almost not at all for vernacular names), simply because there are so many
species per Lepidoptera taxonomist when compared to Aves taxonomists: the
birders are arguing mostly about subspecific or lower taxa level problems (i.e.
there aren't too many queries at the species level as they've mostly sorted out
the synonymy problems and don't have many new species to describe), whereas the
Leps people are still wading through libraries of catalogues and many
collections in order to sort out the synonym of even (possibly especially) the
common species - where tracing the original description can still be a
devilishly slow task if only one taxonomist is working in that particular genus.
There are still over 100,000 undescribed species of leps - as if there isn't
enough to do sorting out the synonymy problems. They'll get there in the end
(funding permitting), so in the meantime, we must learn to be a little more
patient.

> Now please, if we pursue this topic, please let's try to stay off the high
> horses.

I tried!

> The people on this list are not ignorant-- just testy after so many
> unnecessary verbal muggings, and clearly well-informed and worthy of respect.
> I have offered what I think are intelligent observations here,

Need to smarten up the observations a little, as Andrew pointed out. There are
several localities in his list that are Portugese names!

> and I would appreciate it if they are treated as such, rather than as targets
> for condescention.

(sorry about this but I couldn't resist - major loss of merit points on my part)

>  There are good reasons to be polite, even behind the electronic screen in
> front of you.
>
> Peace, with progress as a side effect,

:)Incidentally, I too am curious as to why Andrew didn't record any Nymphalinae.
I don't suppose they were all hill-topping the hills and mountains he didn't get
to the top of?? (Although Murphy's Law states that they would have been!) Was it
anything to do with the time of day the recording was undertaken?As a final
note, I would also like to recommend Markku's website
(http://www.funet.fi/pub/sci/bio/life/intro.html), although I've not seen too
much in the way of Portugese vernacular names for butterflies mentioned yet and
he readily admits to not always following current taxonomic classification.
Maybe someone can help out?

Sorry to rant for so long, but fieldwork's been rained off for several days
(Typhoon Maggie has dumped nearly 150mm of rain here in the last 24 hours), I've
had it with setting specimens in the lab, cross checking references and species
distributions for my thesis (for the time being), and haven't the appetite to do
any more web authoring for a couple of days, so have taken up a few minutes to
air some (hopefully constuctive) comments.

regards

Roger.


--
Roger C. KENDRICK
  Demonstrator / Ph.D. Student
  Dept. of Ecology & Biodiversity, The University of Hong Kong
  mailto:kendrick at hkusua.hku.hk

mailing address:
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  (and will eventually replace the HKLG site)