Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora and fauna)

Note: Some of the discussion below now relates to the extant naming conventions page Naming conventions (fauna).

There seems a fair deal of confusion about namimg animals and plants. The normal convention is that English names of species begin with capitals, eg--Magnificent Frigatebird, but groups are lower case and, usually, plural as in the frigatebirds.

I would accept that for encyclopedia entries for a group, the singular form is appropriate. Headings for single species should have all words capitalised, eg Great Northern Diver, but not groups eg Wood warblers

Binomial and trinomial scientific names are written with a capitalised generic name and lower case specific name, eg Fregata magnificens. Higher taxonomic groupings are always capitalised.

Hm. This page seems to be a duplicate of Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (biology). Anyway. Current naming conventions already cover what you are talking about: Our capitalization convention states that only proper names are capitalized so [Great Northern Diver] is wrong but great northern diver is correct. We also use common names of things instead of scientific names. Our pluralization convention also states that we should rarely title articles in the plural (although for organism groups that do not have common names it is usually OK to use the Latin plural per common scientific usage). Read the respective naming convention pages for the rationale (which isn't immediately obvious but very important due to how wikis work). --mav 17:55 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Yep. We say dog, cat, elephant, not Dog, Cat, Elephant, except as they start sentences or article names. Why should we say Magnificent Frigatebird? Where is this capitalization documented? -- Zoe

I agree wholeheartedly that plants' and animals' common names should not be capitalized as a general rule, I just want to make sure that everyone is aware there are exceptions, like Queen Anne's lace. (which should have a lowercase "l" but uppercase "A"). Tokerboy

encyclopedia.com and [] use lower case -- Zoe

$0.02: Not capitalising the name leads to ambiguity. "I caught a black rat" and "I caught a Black Rat" mean two different things. Tannin 10:13 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)


 * Not when you write: "I caught a black rat" or "I caught a black rat" The link itself highlights the term. Besides Black Rat is incorrect grammar since it does not follow the rules of capitalization. --mav


 * If you caught a black-coloured rat of unspecified species, then you want to write "I caught a black rat. If you caught an example of Rattus rattus, even if it was purple with spots, you want to write "I caught a Black Rat". The term "black rat" is correct grammer if you mean a dark-coloured rat. If you mean Rattus rattus then "Black Rat" is correct. (In exactly the same way as it would be incorrect to write "I met bill clinton today" rather than "I met Bill Clinton today".) -- Tannin


 * The only time you would capitalize Black Rat is if you named a rat you had "Black Rat". At that point the name Black Rat becomes a proper name of the rat and should be capitalized. --mav

I just checked with the four or five bird boooks I happened to lay my hands on, and then a few other things that I had lying around the place:
 * Michael Morecombe: Field guide to Australian birds, Steve Parish Publishing, 2000.
 * Slater, Slater & Slater: The Slater field guide to Australian birds, Lansdowne, 1989.
 * Jim Fleg: Birds of Australia, New Holland, 2002.
 * Pizzey & Knight: Field guide to the birds of Australia, Harper Collins, 1999.
 * Higgins & Peter (Eds.) Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic birds (Volume 6), OUP, 2002. (This is the official source for information on Oz, NZ & Antarctic birds.)
 * Allen, Midgley & Allen, Field guide to the freshwater fishes of Australia, Western Australian Museum, 2002.
 * Menkhorst & Knight: A Field guide to the mammals of Australia, Oxford, 2001.
 * Ivan Holliday, A Field guide to Australian trees, Reed New Holland, 1974.

Every single one of these uses capitalisation for the common names of species. Tannin 10:51 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia ain't a bird book - our focus is a bit larger than that. Looking at the way specialist capitalize things is very wrong since they almost always overcapitalize the terms they often use. I for example capitalize Transit-Oriented Development and Eminent Domain while at work even though these are erroneous capitalizations for common usage. If something isn't a proper noun (such as the name of a specific person, place or thing) then it shouldn't be capitalized. --mav


 * This seems to me a very unconvincing argument: it doesn't deal with the ambiguity problem and it makes articles more difficult to link to. I'm happy to listen to debate and go along with a consensus view, but it would need better reasons than those advanced so far to abandon the accepted correct form. Anyone? Tannin 22:40 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)


 * How is it unconvincing? It is just pointing out that specialists tend to add spurious capitalizations to things which are counter to common rules of grammar. But Wikipedia is not written for specialists - it is written for the general public. Therefore common grammatical usage should be proffered. I also don't see an ambiguity problem here and the statement that this makes linking more difficult is erroneous - esp for anybody who knows our naming conventions. --mav


 * Of the list I cited above, Higgins & Petter is written for the specialist, all the others are written for the general public. Capitalisation of common names of species is common usage - refer to list above for clear evidence of this.

(violating indentation for ease of typing)

The Chicago Manual of Style, the last resort in such cases, in its entry on Vernacular Names of Plants and Animals, starts by sort of giving up:


 * Common names of plants and animals are capitalized in a bewildering variety of ways, even in lists and catalogs having professional status. It is often appropriate to follow the style of an "official" list, and if the author wishes to do so, he should let his editor know what list he is following.

In the absence of a list, Chicago recommends a "down style", that is, only capitalizing "proper nouns and adjectives used with their original reference". Thus,

mayappple           Cooper's hawk            Canada thistle dutchman's breeches rhesus monkey            black-eyed susan

Likewise, for domestic animals:

white leghorn fowl Rhode Island red         golden retriever English setter     King Charles spaniel     boysenberry

And so forth. Not totally unequivocal. Did a Mr. Boysen discover that berry? Is the mayapple a May fruit? But not too hard to follow, and, if the occasional dutchman's breeches should appear as Dutchman's breeches, consistency would still appear to have been maintained. Ortolan88

Given the fact that Wikipedia doesn't recognize any one list as being official (and doing so would be a violation of NPOV) we should therefore go for the "down style." This is especially true because of our already well-established naming convention against capitalization. Going with the "down style" is thus compatible with current Wikipedia conventions and prevents us from having to make a huge, complicated and inconsistent exception. Our contributors would be harmed by the confusion such an inconsistent exception would cause. So we should just follow the KISS Principle. --mav

No-one has yet suggested a way to deal with the ambiguity problem. Tannin


 * I thought mav did, two hr tags above? Koyaanis Qatsi


 * not even close Tannin


 * How about "The black death was carried into Britain by a species of rat called the black rat". This is unambiguous. The two competing suggestions:


 * "The black death was carried into Britain by black rats"
 * "The black death was carried into Britain by Black Rats"

Have the downside that people who do not know that the black rat is a species will not understand the sentence without following the link. Since most wikipedia readers are not rat experts, this seems a useful benefit. Martin


 * Exactly. Because the species name follows the normal convention and is capitalised, anyone can tell that it is a particular species without having to be an expert.


 * Only if they know that wikipedia capitalises species names.


 * Martin, just about everything capitalises species names. Except Wikipedia. Tannin

Through my dozens of bird reference books dating from 1939 to 2000, all but one use the Ruby-throated Hummingbird convention. Sibley guides, Peterson guides, National Geographic guides, guides from the U.S., guides from Great Britain. Why is it that in the wikipedia-universe B-29 Superfortress isn't B-29 superfortress, and the B-2 Spirit isn't the B-2 spirit? I'd like a serious answer as to why military aircraft are exempt from this rule and birds are not.

Interestingly, the one exception I found occurred in the 1991 Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds. However, their convention is not to write Ruby-throated hummingbird, but to write Hummingbird, ruby-throat. They do allow for Hummingbird, Allen's because Allen is a proper name and is never written as allen (unless it appears in an e.e. cummings poem...but even Edward Estlin isn't given lower-cases es by Wikipedia or the E. E. Cummings Society.) Kingturtle 01:11 Apr 18, 2003 (UTC)

The capitalization of family names is in integral aspect of the toxonomy syntax. For example the word diver in "The most widely distributed diver" could mean any bird that dives, or even any animal that dives, but "The most widely distributed Diver" tells the reader that we are referring to members of the Diver family. But in order for this signal to the reader to succeed, the species article that contains said sentence needs to be called "Red-throated Diver." So, this is just another diatribe wishing for the allowance for capitalization in secondary words in titles of articles about bird species. Kingturtle 02:30 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)

P.S. Furthermore, capitalization in secondary words allows us to discern between official names and folk names. A folk name for Red-throated Loon is pegging-owl loon. What is to distinguish red-throated loon from pegging-owl loon? Capitalization. Kingturtle 03:08 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)