I enjoy this discussion, as I have always thought that languages were just as much fun to learn about as birds.

I'll chime in and point out that more than half of scientific names come from Greek, rather than Latin, so I routinely and almost without thinking correct people when they use the term "Latin name." Probably "scientific name" is the way to go, unless you're old enough to have taken Classics in school (I think they did away with that even before I went to school) and actually know that a name is Latin or Greek. However, many of them are mixed, with the genus from one language and the species from another.

The controversy over capitalizing common names of birds in print has raged for decades, and I suspect it will go on raging. I agree entirely with what Michael says, but more and more groups of animals (and I guess plants) have "official" common names now, or at least names considered official by some name-giving committee in a particular region (no agreement all across the world), and any time I use an amphibian or dragonfly or mammal name in an article, I capitalize it, even though it's not really the same as the classical use of a proper name. Proper names have usually been given to an individual (John James Audubon, the Mississippi River, Podunk), not a class of individuals.

However, I think so many different kinds of names that do refer to classes of individuals are now capitalized - think of Starbucks, Prius, Mariners, Democrats - that it is entirely proper to consider common names of organisms of equally high status.

-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net


On Mar 18, 2011, at 12:00 PM, tweeters-request at mailman1.u.washington.edu wrote:

> Message: 8
> Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2011 12:43:15 -0700
> From: Michael Schrimpf <schrimpf at u.washington.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Tweeters] Blue jay and capitalization
> To: Eric Kowalczyk <aceros at mindspring.com>
> Cc: tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
> Message-ID:
> <AANLkTi=jzD85rVKo-q2SF5-z+a2h0czZ_niZfSyfVGb_ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Some of the confusion regarding capitalization likely comes from lack of
> conformity in the scientific world. Ornithology has a tradition of using
> capitalized common names for birds, but many other scientific disciplines do
> not have such rules for other organisms. Many scientific journals,
> therefore, which all have some set of formatting rules, might require a
> researcher to label it a "blue jay," while others may allow for "Blue Jay".
> When the common name involves a proper name, however, that proper name does
> need to be capitalized, even if the rest of it is not (e.g. Steller's jay or
> Pacific wren).
>
> In all cases, a scientific name has certain universal rules: it should be
> italicized and the genus should be capitalized while the species should not
> (e.g. *Cyanocitta cristata*). That convention may also be responsible for
> confusing people, because it should only apply to the scientific (latin)
> name.
>
> Michael Schrimpf
> Seattle




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