agarics & Agaricales

Background thoughts about approaching common names

Common names for mushrooms in English-speaking North America have been in a sorry state for some time. Not many are used regularly by anyone. Even fewer are used regularly by people who study identification or taxonomy. Enthusiasts seeking common names are usually redirected to scientific names, and might be shamed first for even asking.

It's not hard to see that whatever the issue is, it's not inherent to common names. They aren't all doomed to languish—all of us, even the strongest common-name critics, readily use them for all kinds of animals and plants, and even a few mushrooms. We're all happy to talk about "great blue herons", "white oaks", "lightning bugs", "grizzly bears", "humans", "chanterelles", "boletes", and "fly agarics". Common names in a general sense are alive and well. Unfortunately, so is the idea, in some communities, that something is inherently and hopelessly wrong with them. Some of the most common arguments brought up against common names for mushrooms are true facts, but facts that are also true of scientific names:

• "Often, one species has multiple common names."
  Often, one species has multiple scientific names. Taxonomists (eventually) deal with this when it's discovered—they synonymize the names, and follow rules about which one to adopt going forward (rules that don't care much about our preferences). We already do pretty much the same thing for common names, whenever we need to choose one. It's as simple as that—choosing one. We don't have to do it as rigorously as with scientific names. We get to choose the name we like better, for whatever venue we're in—a book, an app, or a walk in the woods. We want to aim for a single name per species across publications, but why not also let additional names thrive regionally?



• "Often, one common name is used for multiple species."
  Often, one scientific name is used for multiple species. Taxonomists (eventually) deal with this when it's discovered—they split the species and make up a new name to use for the "new" one. We already do pretty much the same thing for common names. As before, we don't have to do it as rigorously as with scientific names. We can keep the same name for both if we want (if they're identical in the field), rename both if we want (to highlight a differentiating feature), or, of course, just rename whichever one of the two we choose.



• "Often, a species has no common name."
  Often, a species has no scientific name. Taxonomists (eventually) deal with this when it's discovered—when they find/study an unnamed species, they make up a name for it. We already do pretty much the same thing for common names. As before, we don't have to do it so rigorously as with scientific names. It's much easier to propose a new common name than a new scientific name.



• "Often, a common name is not informative about the features of the species."
  Often, a scientific name is not informative about the features of the species. This is probably a worse problem for scientific names than for common names. When our understanding of a species changes, we can immediately start using a different common name, but can effectively never start using a different scientific name. Scientific names can't be adjusted just to align their meaning with our (new or better) concept of the species. For extreme examples, consider that most Chlorophyllum species don't have green gills, Hypomyces tremellicola grows on Crepidotus, and Gyromitra esculenta is toxic.

So, why are mushroom common names in particular faring so badly? One reason might be the way our relationship with mushrooms differs from our relationship with animals and plants. Mushrooms are (for most people, historically) less interesting, less commonly encountered, and much harder to identify. Compared to the great amount of effort it usually takes to start recognizing a mushroom species in the field, learning a scientific name can seem like a trivial extra bit to tack on. If the average mushroom identifier has to put in more hours studying than the average bird identifier, it might make sense that mushroom common names would get less attention.

But they don't have to be doing this much worse. Identification is becoming less and less daunting. Our understanding of local species is accelerating, and our identification tools are constantly improving. Mushrooms are exploding in popular culture. More and more people have the time and interest in honing sensory ID skills, and this doesn't necessarily translate to time and interest honing Latin skills. Moreover, even if scientific names were universally essential, learning common names can still help. Many can work as mnemonics for scientific names. Many new enthusiasts want them, and some old enthusiasts do too.

Mushroom common names have been stuck at a distant third after animals and plants, but I believe we could be coming in at a close third. Obviously, we can approach this directly by advocating for mushroom common names, and using mushroom common names. But there might be an equally important, if not more important, angle to work from. Mushroom common names might be faring so badly partly because the ones we have are so bad. Those four arguments above (about extraneous, overloaded, deficient, and uninformative common names) might be more true than they need to be because almost nobody is investing effort into curating common names. I believe the ones we "already have" are, in large part, halfhearted, uninspired, inconsistent, confusing, goofy, awkward, long, or boring. Many are relics from past centuries when mycophiles only cared about a few species and mycologists only knew about a few more. These old, low-resolution names are now dysfunctional in teasing apart the several hundred genera and several thousand species we're becoming familiar with in North America. We've seen names that nobody wants to use fester for years, being typed and printed in all the productions that need a common name, and never earnestly used out loud. Composing and choosing common names that aren't terrible might be an important step to catching up to the more familiar kingdoms.

Of course scientific names have their own advantages. If you're reading this page, you're probably familiar with them. The ICN provides a long list of strict rules that theoretically safeguard against almost any ambiguity. But this clarity doesn't come for free. scientific names and common names are like business suits and swimsuits. On any particular occasion, it's important to choose which one to wear. But trying to choose only one to wear for one's entire life would be silly. Assuming the advantages of scientific names are obvious, consider the advantages of (good) common names, which...

• are easier for everyone to remember, say, and spell
• are more likely to be helpful for identification than scientific names
• are more charismatic for the lay population
• support an intuitive folk taxonomy based on prominent features (not unintuitive evolutionary relationships)
• can stay the same, when we like, not being subject to the latest whims of scientific taxonomists
• can be proposed or changed, when we like, not being subject to strict rules of the ICN
• can support multiple accepted names at once, if/when we like
• can name things scientific names can't: provisional names, species groups, unranked clades, different stages of a species' life cycle, and polyphyletic groupings.

Conclusions:

1. We can propose and promote mushroom common names, with a spirit of open-mindedness, creativity, and willingness to experiment.

2. Any project providing common names should be explicitly tentative, until we're confident about what kinds of common names perform well "in the wild" with both laypeople and experts.

3. Common names and scientific names achieve different goals. We should embrace the advantages of each, and the differences between them, and not try to torture one into a copy of the other.


Next:

• Specific guidelines suggested for common names

© 2024 Jacob Kalichman