[Nhcoll-l] Common names

[Douglas Yanega]

As an ICZN Commissioner, I deal very literally on a daily basis with 
scientific nomenclature, and this work intersects a great deal with 
vernacular terms - indeed, the farther back in the literature one goes, 
the less distinction there is between the two.

For those of you interested in the topic, I can give some examples 
illustrating some interesting things:

(1) The are thousands of examples of single organisms with many 
different common names. Conversely, and far less often, some common 
names extend across very significant taxonomic boundaries. Not many of 
these refer to more than two different *types* of organisms (i.e., not 
related at a rank higher than Class, so one discounts common names for - 
e.g. - fish, like "rockfish", which still always refers to a fish, at 
least, even if they are in many different families or orders). One of 
the better-known examples is "daddy longlegs", which refers, in 
different places, to opilionid arachnids, to true spiders, or to tipulid 
flies (aka crane flies). A more obscure and extreme example is the 
common name "grampus", which refers to certain small whales, to a 
salamander, to the larvae of the eastern dobsonfly, and to a type of 
uropygid arachnid (aka vinegaroon).

(2) Even very closely-related languages can treat taxonomy differently 
when it comes to the inclusivity/exclusivity of common names. In Spanish 
(at least, the Latin American version), if you say "mariposa" you could 
be referring to either a butterfly or a moth, and would have to specify 
"mariposa nocturna" to even attempt to discriminate - a thing that works 
rather poorly for the many common day-flying moths in the New World 
tropics. However, in Brazilian Portuguese, "mariposa" means a moth, and 
"borboleta" is a butterfly.

(3) There seem to be relatively few polysyllabic common names that are 
not "cobbled together" out of terms or phrases that apply to other 
things or have other meanings (e.g. "ōsuzumebachi" is a Japanese name 
for the Giant Northern Hornet, aka "murder hornet", but it translates as 
"giant sparrow bee"). "Dobsonfly" and "hellgrammite" are names for the 
adults and larvae, respectively, of a type of insect, and neither term 
has a known etymology. Oddly enough, one of the other common names for 
this insect, "grampus", is also used for a salamander in the same region 
that itself has a novel common name, "hellbender", though both 
components of this name have some etymological link to other English 
words. One of most colorful examples that I know is the name 
"*jequitiranaboia*", a Brazilian word which refers to a single genus of 
large lanternflies, /Fulgora/. This word appears to have no etymological 
links to anything - it simply refers to this one type of insect.

(4) In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was fairly common for 
authors to propose hierarchical groups in their native language, often 
directly from the vernacular. The ICZN Code has provisions that permit 
us to acknowledge and give priority to many of these groups, *so long as 
they are compatible with binomial nomenclature*. Some of these group 
names became genus-rank names, many others are family-rank names. The 
most common examples, at least in entomology, are in French, but also in 
German, Italian, and others. I bring this up for two reasons: (1) 
because these are vernacular names, with non-standard (i.e., 
non-Linnean) endings, they are sometimes overlooked in the course of 
scholarly work on names, but they need to be carefully evaluated. Some 
are very demonstrably vernacular, some others are just idiosyncratic 
attempts to use genus names as the basis for higher groups. The point 
is, it sometimes turns out that a name presently in use has an older 
*non-standard* version of that name that should technically have 
priority. That being said, in the most recent edition of the Code, these 
and other cases of potential resurrection of forgotten names very often 
do NOT displace younger names, so if any of you encounter such 
situations, be aware that the Code must be consulted (esp. Art. 11.7 and 
11.8) for possible exceptions; strict priority has *not* been the 
default in Zoology since the 2000 Code edition was released, and not 
everyone is aware of this. (2) One needs to be very careful, when 
digging into old literature, to be certain that the nomenclature used 
therein IS compatible with binomial nomenclature. There are a fair 
number of works, some of them well-known, that contained numerous names 
with 4 or even 5 components, and the Code specifically states that if 
there is evidence that a work does not consistently adhere to binomial 
nomenclature, then NONE of the names in that work are available names in 
Zoology, *even those with only two components*. The decision is not made 
name-by-name, but applies to the entirety of a published work; no 
"cherry-picking" allowed. This is governed by Art. 11.4, and not widely 
recognized.

Peace,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              https://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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