Common name error? gillettii

[Kenelm Philip]

>Many recent books, articles, lists and web sites have been using "Gil-
>lette's Checkerspot" as the common name for Euphydryas gillettii.

>Cris Guppy advises that the first author to use a common name for gillettii
>is Holland (1931) and that he spelled the name "Gillett's".

	The 1951 edition of Holland's _Butterfly Book_ also has "Gillett's".

	Out of curiosity, I looked this up in Miller's _The Common Names
of North American Butterflies_. There it is listed as "Gillette's", ref-
erenced to Holland (1931), Miller (1991), Pyle (1981), and Tilden & Smith
(1986). Apparently the power of 'Gillette' was enough to override the
correct spelling in Holland.  :-)

	The NABA checklist (1995) also has "Gillette's". Perhaps this
should be brought to the attention of the committee working on the new
NABA list.

	This matter gives me the impression that the vaunted stability of
English names may not be as reliable as some people hope...

	On the other hand, the amusing thing about this species is that the
scientific name also has chronologically variable spelling in checklists:

_gillettei_: Dyar, _A List of the North American Lepidoptera_, 1902

_gilletti_: Miller & Brown, _A Catalogue/Checklist of the Butterflies of
            America North of Mexico, 1981 (corrected to _gillettii_ in
            the Supplement)

_gillettii_: MacDunnough, 1938; dos Passos, 1964; Hodges et al, 1983

							Ken Philip
fnkwp at uaf.edu




 
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