Talk:Panopea generosa/Scientific vs. common name

Scientific vs. common name
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments. This section is included at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gastropods, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Bivalves, and Talk:Panopea generosa; and can be edited from any of those pages'' Is there any reason this article shouldn't be moved from Panopea generosa to the common name of Pacific geoduck, per Naming conventions (fauna)? --Tom Hulse (talk) 20:33, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Tom! Just like you are a self proclaimed "plant nut" I am a "shell nut", hence the moniker.  This article comes under the global umbrella of WikiProject Bivalves, which is patterned after WikiProject Gastropods.  We are trying to use proper taxonomy throughout both projects, up to date per the World Register of Marine Species.  Knowing that a lot of people use the common names for organisms we try to use redirects to get the common name search moved to the formal name article.  Part of the problem we run into with marine fauna is that "common names" have not always garnered full acceptance, and sometimes there are multiple common names.  With birds I know that there are generally accepted common names; maybe this is true in botany too.  If you are interested, go to the main class article Bivalvia and scroll down through the taxonomy.  For starters we are trying to clean up the major taxa through families, working down to species articles as we have time and interest. Shellnut (talk) 19:43, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Can I ask if you've taken this idea higher up, to WP:TOL or WP:FAUNA? The reason I ask is that WP:FAUNA has clear and binding conventions for all animals, including bivalves. You may not locally override them at your bivalve project, per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS; you would need to get the wider community's permission to change their guidline for all animals. So just becuase "some" common names of marine fauna may not have garnered wide acceptance doesn't mean we can apply that to other related articles. I don't think Pacific geoduck is in any way ambiguous, do you? --Tom Hulse (talk) 20:57, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi again Tom! You raise interesting points.  I will copy this thread onto the talk page of both projects and see what the senior editors thoughts are.  Thank you for raising this interesting issue. Shellnut (talk) 04:14, 6 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Hello Tom. I think you will find that "geoduck" is the common name most often used for this species, rather than "Pacific geoduck". However there is a related clam that is sometimes known as the "Atlantic geoduck". I think "geoduck" for the Pacific species is arguably a really genuine common name, like "quahog", a species which we currently have under the article name "Hard clam", a name I myself have actually never heard used! But the great majority of mollusks (gastropods and bivalves) really only have a scientific name. You can find so-called common names for all kinds of species in various field guides and other publications (and very often these so-called common names are different from one publication to the next), but just because names exist doesn't mean that anybody actually uses them. If we try to enforce the guideline you are talking about it will be quite chaotic trying to decide whether a name actually really counts as a common name or not. However if you want to move Panopea generosa to Geoduck, please go ahead, and if you want to move Hard clam to Quahog, please go ahead with that move too. Thanks for your interest in our projects, we appreciate it. I should perhaps explain that WikiProject Bivalves is brand new, having been started this January, so no doubt we will find all kinds of weird things that need fixing as we gradually go through the bivalve articles. The gastropod project never really bothered much with the bivalve articles as it had so many of its own to deal with. Best wishes to you, Invertzoo (talk) 22:15, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
 * After looking closer at the references, I agree 100% that just "geoduck" equates best to this species, rather than the genus. I grew up here in the PNW, where Panopea generosa is native. Even the kids here know what a geoduck is, but no one but a few scientist will even recognize Panopea generosa.
 * One note regarding common names, you might also interpret a scientific name to be a common name. So whatever the most easily recognized name is, in the areas which it occurs, for your species of clam, whether it's Hard clam, quahog, or Mercenaria mercenaria, then that might be the name you could use (not spelled out in the policy, but you might use it in cases where a "common" name is grossly obscure). Your complete guide to article naming for animals is at WP:FAUNA.  --Tom Hulse (talk) 23:01, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

My first attempt at transcluding a talk section onto multiple pages; please tell me if I got any of if wrong. --Tom Hulse (talk) 11:49, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Tom, I "moved" the Geoduck article to Geoduck. From now on if you come across anything like this (and you have already checked and are certain you are right about the common name being much more recognizable than the scientific name) please Be Bold and just go ahead and change it yourself, no problem. You can always just leave a note on the talk page explaining why you changed the article name. Invertzoo (talk) 12:50, 7 March 2012 (UTC)