Common name

In biology, a common name of a taxon or organism (also known as a vernacular name, English name, colloquial name, country name, popular name, or farmer's name) is a name that is based on the normal language of everyday life; and is often contrasted with the scientific name for the same organism, which is often based in Latin. A common name is sometimes frequently used, but that is not always the case.^[1]

In

Sometimes common names are created by authorities on one particular subject, in an attempt to make it possible for members of the general public (including such interested parties as fishermen, farmers, etc.) to be able to refer to one particular species of organism without needing to be able to memorise or pronounce the scientific name. Creating an "official" list of common names can also be an attempt to standardize the use of common names, which can sometimes vary a great deal between one part of a country and another, as well as between one country and another country, even where the same language is spoken in both places.[3]

Use as part of folk taxonomy

A common name intrinsically plays a part in a classification of objects, typically an incomplete and informal classification, in which some names are

The form of scientific names for organisms, called binomial nomenclature, is superficially similar to the noun-adjective form of vernacular names or common names which were used by non-modern cultures. A collective name such as owl was made more precise by the addition of an adjective such as screech.^[8] Linnaeus himself published a flora of his homeland Sweden, Flora Svecica (1745), and in this, he recorded the Swedish common names, region by region, as well as the scientific names. The Swedish common names were all binomials (e.g. plant no. 84 Råg-losta and plant no. 85 Ren-losta); the vernacular binomial system thus preceded his scientific binomial system.^[9]

Linnaean authority William T. Stearn said:

By the introduction of his binomial system of nomenclature, Linnaeus gave plants and animals an essentially Latin nomenclature like vernacular nomenclature in style but linked to published, and hence relatively stable and verifiable, scientific concepts and thus suitable for international use.^[10]

Geographic range of use

The geographic range over which a particularly common name is used varies; some common names have a very local application, while others are virtually universal within a particular language. Some such names even apply across ranges of languages; the word for cat, for instance, is easily recognizable in most Germanic and many Romance languages. Many vernacular names, however, are restricted to a single country and colloquial names to local districts.^[11]

Some languages also have more than one common name for the same animal. For example, in Irish, there are many terms that are considered outdated but still well-known for their somewhat humorous and poetic descriptions of animals.^[12]

Constraints and problems

Common names are used in the writings of both

• Because common names often have a very local distribution, the same fish in a single area may have several common names.
• Because of ignorance of relevant biological facts among the lay public, a single species of fish may be called by several common names, because individuals in the species differ in appearance depending on their maturity, gender, or can vary in appearance as a morphological response to their natural surroundings, i.e. ecophenotypic variation.
• In contrast to common names, formal
  taxonomic
  names imply biological relationships between similarly named creatures.
• Because of incidental events, contact with other languages, or simple confusion, common names in a given region will sometimes change with time.
• In a book that lists over 1200 species of fishes^[14] more than half have no widely recognised common name; they either are too nondescript or too rarely seen to have earned any widely accepted common name.
• Conversely, a single common name often applies to multiple species of fishes. The lay public might simply not recognise or care about subtle differences in appearance between only very distantly related species.
• Many species that are rare, or lack economic importance, do not have a common name.^[15]

Coining common names

In scientific binomial nomenclature, names commonly are derived from

Lists that include common names

Lists of general interest

Plants Plant by common name Garden plants Culinary herbs and spices Poisonous plants Plants in the Bible Vegetables Useful plants

Animals Birds by region Mammals by region

Plants and animals Invasive species

Collective nouns

For

list of collective nouns

(e.g. a flock of sheep, pack of wolves).

Official lists

Some organizations have created official lists of common names, or guidelines for creating common names, hoping to standardize the use of common names.

For example, the Australian Fish Names List or AFNS was compiled through a process involving work by taxonomic and seafood industry experts, drafted using the CAAB (Codes for Australian Aquatic Biota) taxon management system of the CSIRO,^[3] and including input through public and industry consultations by the Australian Fish Names Committee (AFNC). The AFNS has been an official Australian Standard since July 2007 and has existed in draft form (The Australian Fish Names List) since 2001. Seafood Services Australia (SSA) serve as the Secretariat for the AFNC. SSA is an accredited Standards Australia (Australia's peak non-government standards development organisation) Standards Development^[25]

The Entomological Society of America maintains a database of official common names of insects, and proposals for new entries must be submitted and reviewed by a formal committee before being added to the listing.^[26]

Efforts to standardize English names for the amphibians and reptiles of North America (north of Mexico) began in the mid-1950s.^[27] The dynamic nature of taxonomy necessitates periodical updates and changes in the nomenclature of both scientific and common names. The Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles (SSAR) published an updated list in 1978,^[28] largely following the previous established examples, and subsequently published eight revised editions ending in 2017.^[29] More recently the SSAR switched to an online version with a searchable database.^[30] Standardized names for the amphibians and reptiles of Mexico in Spanish and English were first published in 1994,^[31] with a revised and updated list published in 2008.^[32]

A set of guidelines for the creation of English names for birds was published in

The Auk in 1978.^[33] It gave rise to Birds of the World: Recommended English Names

and its Spanish and French companions.

The

Reptilia in 1938, Osteichthyes in 2012, and Odonata

in 2015.

See also

• Folk taxonomy
• List of historical common names
• Scientific terminology
• Category:Plant common names
• Specific name (zoology)

References

Citations

1. ISBN 978-0-295-97477-4
   .
2. ^ "The Differences Between Types of Chemical Names". Retrieved 21 August 2022.
3. ^ ^{a b} List of standardised Australian fish names – November 2004 Draft Archived 2016-05-03 at the Wayback Machine. CSIRO
4. ISBN 0-19-861271-0
   .
5. ISBN 1-86872-713-0
   .
6. ISBN 978-87-92020-09-3
   .
7. ISBN 0-913516-02-3
   .
8. ^ Stearn 1959, p. 6, 9.
9. ^ Stearn 1959, pp. 9–10.
10. ^ Stearn 1959, p. 10.
11. ^ Brickell, C.D.; Baum, B.R.; Hetterscheid, W.J.A.; Leslie, A.C.; McNeill, J.; Trehane, P.; Vrugtman, F.; Wiersema, J.H., eds. (2004). "International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants". Acta Horticulturae. Regnum Veg. 647 (144) (7th ed.).
12. ^ ^{a b} "What's In a Name? Interesting Animal Names in Irish". 2013-05-29. Retrieved 2023-12-30.
13. ^ "bat - Translation to Irish Gaelic with audio pronunciation of translations for bat by New English-Irish Dictionary". www.focloir.ie. Retrieved 2023-12-30.
14. ^
    ISBN 1-86812-032-5
    .
15. ISBN 978-0878934072
    .
16. ISBN 0-8018-8221-4
    .
17. ^ Marchant, J. R. V.; Charles, Joseph F. (1952). Cassell's Latin Dictionary. London: Cassell.
18. ^ Tucker, T. G. (1931). A Concise Etymological Dictionary of Latin. Halle (Saale): Max Niemeyer Verlag.
19. ^ de Candolle, A. (1868). Laws of Botanical Nomenclature adopted by the International Botanical Congress held at Paris in August 1867; together with an Historical Introduction and Commentary by Alphonse de Candolle, Translated from the French. translated by Hugh Algernon Weddell. London: L. Reeve and Co. p. 36, 72
20. ISBN 0-624-00533-X
    .
21. ISBN 0-620-07681-X
    .
22. ISBN 0-620-34053-3
    .
23. ISBN 978-0-643-06511-6
    .
24. ISBN 3-11-010661-2
    .
25. ^ Overview Archived 2006-09-23 at the Wayback Machine: Australian Fish Names Standard. Seafood Services Australia
26. ^ Common Names of Insects Database
27. ^ Conant, Roger, Fred R. Cagle, Coleman J. Goin, Charles H. Lowe, Jr., Wilfred T. Neill, M. Graham Netting, Karl P. Schmidt, Charles E. Shaw, Robert C. Stebbins, and Charles M. Bogert. 1956. Common names for North American amphibians and reptiles. Copeia 1956: 172–185.
28. ^ Collins, J.. T., J. E. Huheey, J. L. Knight, and H. M. Smith. 1978. Standard and current scientific names for North American amphibians and reptiles. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles. Herpetological Circulars No. 7.
29. ISBN 978-1-946681-00-3
30. ^ Society for the Study Amphibians and Reptiles: Checklist of the Standard English Names of Amphibians & Reptiles. (accessed August 2, 2022)
31. ISBN 0-916984-32-X
32. ISBN 978-0-916984-75-5
33. doi:10.1093/auk/95.2.324
    .

Sources

• Stearn, William T. (1959). "The Background of Linnaeus's Contributions to the Nomenclature and Methods of Systematic Biology". Systematic Zoology 8: 4–22.

External links

Look up common name in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Plant names
• Multilingual, Multiscript Plant Name Database
• The use of common names
• Chemical Names of Common Substances
• Plantas medicinales / Medicinal plants (database)