THE QUESTION OF COMMON NAMES 



The labelling of the shell collections brings up once more the oft asked 

 question *'why doesn't every specimen have a common name?" An easy 

 answer to this is that there are not enough common names to go around and 

 while over 350,000 animals, great and small, have already been described 

 and the list is steadily growing, our largest dictionaries contain only about 

 300,000 words. Another reason is that the great majority of animals are 

 not commonly known and never have received and never will receive any 

 common names. Insects and shells are familiar examples of the case in 

 point, to say nothing of the vast host of minute organisms that the public 

 never sees, but each one of which must be named. A great many so-called 

 common names, too, have no meaning to people outside of the countries 

 where the animals to which they are applied are found and it is not probable 

 that many readers of this are familiar with Colugo, Wobbygong, Mullagong, 

 Scheltopusic, Cacomistl, Aye Aye, Kagu, Awa, Kea and Kakapo. And yet 

 each one of these is an extensively used '^popular" name. 



'It may be objected that these are all names borrowed from people who do 

 not speak the English language but many strictly English names are just as 

 incomprehensible to us. The chaffinch, for example, i^ variously called pink, 

 spink and twink (these three names referring to its note), beechfinch, 

 horsefinch, shell apple, skelly, scobby, and shifla. And how many here 

 even know a chaffinch? The truth is no name means anything to us unless 

 we know the creature to which it is applied, or at least something about it, 

 and so can associate the name with the object. Not until then does it have 

 much value as a **common" name. The robin is found throughout the 

 length and breadth of the United States and everyone thinks he knows **a 

 robin." But the original robin of England, the robin-redbreast of a thousand 

 and one stories, is very different from his North American namesake and 

 related to our redstart, while in Jamaica the name is given to a little tody, 

 one of a group of birds peculiar to Tropical America. In India the robin is 

 a warbler, in Austral a a flycatcher, or a little Petroeca and the South African 

 "robin" is a coly, a bird about as much like its English namesake as is a 

 parrot. Here surely is a case where a common name means nothing more 

 than a bird with an olive brown back and a reddish breast, that may belong 

 to any one of seven different families, which is very much as if every red- 

 haired boy should be called Redman, in spite of his parents being named 

 Brown, Black or White. \_Museum NezvSy Brooklyn] 



