Fw: Re: common names

[Ron Gatrelle]

Mike's post is profound in my book. I don't think I am oversimplifying
things by looking at myself and observing that when I "learned" my native
butterfly "language" I was is my teens and twenties. That language was
scientific names. (I am not even sure why that was as Holland, Klots,
Comstock,  etc had common names right there in their books. Hummm, I just
realized this. It was not what was in the books, it was the words used by
those collectors I corresponded and talked with that did it - THEY used the
Latinized names - so I did too.)  = My Mom and Dad spoke English and so I
did too.

Now that I am much older and common names have come into vogue - I very
often have no idea what species or subspecies is being referred to - Here I
am the mirrored antithesis of Mary Beth's post. I don't know if it is a
skipper or a - see I don't even know if it is brushFoot or Brush feet or
brushfoots. In almost 60 years I have never used those terms for leps
families - except for skippers,  hairstreaks, and swallowtails. (Thinking
out loud as I go along here.)

What I heard Mike say below is that the first set of names you learn are
like a native language - be they scientific or common. Thus, when one is
much older and a new terminology is presented it is very much like trying
to learn a non native tongue at that stage of one's life. I think we all
know that the best time to become multilingual is before one becomes a
teen. Old minds don't like new terms for familiar (Mary's valid point)
learned visual-word associations.

When the average American goes to some non English part of the world they
think - "Why can't these people talk so we can understand them."
Obviously, when non English speaking people visit "our" area they think the
same thing - For example "Why can't these Americans speak French!"

Why can't the birders become butterflyers just admit that the "reason" they
want to use common names is that that is the "language" they are used to? I
can admit the opposite. It is not "natural" for me to use common names -
and I am not about to learn them all - especially since many of the current
NABA type names are CHANGES from the few I did learn years ago. Just
because it is "natural" for me to use scientific names and "natural" for
"you" to use common names does not mean EITHER is WRONG in our everyday
leping.

Now, if it was just a matter of which group of "names" to use in everyday
life we would have a draw - a stalemate. But as I have often stated,
scientific "names" are actually "technical terms" - and in that area common
names are deaf, dumb, and blind - totally non functional.

Further, Mary's statement that         "... Scientific nomenclature, in
regards to speciation, is _usually_ based on the discoverer, which has no
point of reference except to the person who it was _named after..."
is so far from demonstrateable truth that this remark infers an underlying
political agenda. The vast majority of organisms are _not_ named for their
discoverer. A great many are Latinized descriptions of place of origin or
primary diagnostic character. Some are frivolous or partronyms. Mary may
not have had the following in mind - at all - but there are those who think
that "collectors" are largely motivate to catch and kill leps only in hope
one will be named after them.  This is a hyper-environmental wacko alarmist
scare tactic and myth.

The ability of accurate identification does not come by learning names -
common or scientific. It comes only from learning organisms. A Rose by any
other name is still the same. Well, not really. To the beginner this may be
true. But to the true student, there are lots of different Rosaceae:
Potentilla, Rubus, Sanguisorba, Agrimonia, Filipendula, Geum, Sorbus,
Rosa,    Aruncus, Alchemilla, Duchesnea, Fragaria, Potentilla, Waldsteinia,
Gillenia, Anaplobatus, Dalibarda, Sanguisorba, Spiraea, Physocarpus, Pyrus,
Malus, Crataegus, Amelanchier, Prunus, and Chrysobalanus for starters in
the southeast U.S. genera. And yes, Padus virginiana is Choke Cherry - and
most who "know" the organism "refer" to it only as Choke Cherry. But how
many know that it is a Rosaceae? Or confuse it with P. serotina (Black
Cherry)? And how many confuse the organism P. serotina serotina and P.
serotina alabamensis?  (There is nothing sub between subspecies - another
topic.)

Ones status as an "expert" or an "amaeteur" lepidopterist has little to
nothing to do with ones academic education. It has everything to do with
the depth of one's personal experiential knowledge conjunctive with the
breadth of one's study of in-depth lepidopteran literature. I have not
spent one day in college. I have spent almost my entire life reading
butterfly books, scientific butterfly journals, visiting museums,
corresponding with experts, collecting, watching, rearing, recording,
asking about, and researching North American butterflies.
No butterfly beginner should be insulted by the being called an amaeteur.
For that is what beginners in everything are. Now, no one gets to the
position of expert, in anything, without a lot of time, specialized study,
and work. And you know what life teaches?  That when you become and adult
(expert) you put away childish (amaeteur) things.
RG

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Gochfeld" <gochfeld at EOHSI.RUTGERS.EDU>
To: <mbpi at juno.com>; <LEPS-L at lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 10:42 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Re: common names


> In my teens and twenties I found I could learn the scientific names of
> birds and flowers with great ease. I could recite virtually all North
> American and about a third of the South American bird names. I was
> particularly fond of Euscarthmus margaritaceiventer (which I recently
> saw in South America, albeit now under a different generic name and
> perhaps split as well). (Don't worry, the common English name hasn't
> changed).
>
> In my fifties I found it extremely difficult to learn the scientific
> names of the 150 butterfly species found in NJ, even though writing a
> book focused my attention over and over again on those few species.
>
>  Are the names of butterflies intrinsically more difficult or
> meaningless than birds (maybe? all those Indian chiefs don't lend
> themselves to Latinization).
>
> Or maybe it has to do with the number of synapses.  Or as a New Yorker
> columnist once said, by the time you are fifty your brain is just full
> of useless information (I think he mentioned the words to Volare as an
> example). He suggested downloading excess memories into the stomach
> region which has usually expanded substantially by that age.
>
> Mike Gochfeld
>
>
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