Spanish and English Vernacular Names of Mammals of North America

THERYA, 2018, Vol. 9 (1): 73-84 DOI: 10.12933/therya-18-587 ISSN 2007-3364 Spanish and English Vernacular Names of Mammals of North America Sergio Ticul Álvarez-Castañeda1* and Noé Gónzalez-Ruiz2 Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste, Av. Instituto Politécnico Nacional 195, CP. 23096, La Paz. Baja California Sur, México. E-mail: (STA-C). 2 Departamento de Biología, División de Ciencias Biológicas y de la Salud, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Iztapalapa, Apartado Postal 55-535, C.P. 09340. Ciudad de México, México. E-mail: (NGR). * Corresponding author 1 Vernacular names are important to know the characteristics of an organism, and are essential to improve the exchange of information between academic and non-academic areas. These are popular in the English language by improving the efficiency of communications in this language, even being more frequently used in the academic environment even when the scientific name is known. In contrast, common names are only occasionally used in Spanish, only for charismatic mammal species; however, these are applied collectively to a wide range of animals that share the same characteristics, such as bats, mice, gophers. Due to the lack of consensus regarding vernacular names in English and of a matching commong name in Spanish for many species, our objective was to gather, rescue and propose vernacular names for 800 species of mammals in North America. The approach used was to follow, to the extent possible, basic principles to propose vernacular names. Los nombres vernáculos son importantes para conocer las características que tiene un organismo y esenciales para mejorar el intercambio de información entre el ámbito académico y no académico. En el idioma ingles son populares porque representan ventajas al hacer más eficiente la comunicación en su propio idioma, incluso es más utilizado en el medio académico aun cuando se conoce en nombre científico. Pero en el idioma español se usan en ocasiones, solamente son utilizados en especies de mamíferos carismáticas, pero se aplican colectivamente para una amplia gama de animales que comparten las mismas características como los murciélagos, ratones, tuzas. Debido a la falta de consenso de los nombres vernáculos en el idioma inglés y su ausencia en muchas especies en el idioma español, nos dimos a la tarea de recopilar, rescatar y proponer los nombres vernáculos de 800 especies de mamíferos de Norteamérica. Sin embargo, decidimos seguir, en la medida de lo posible, principios básicos para proponer los nombres vernáculos. Keywords: Scientific names; mammals; common name; Mexico. © 2018 Asociación Mexicana de Mastozoología, www.mastozoologiamexicana.org Introduction Since early in history, man has attempted to describe his environment; this required naming the local plants and animals in the surroundings (Clutton-Brock 2015). The names of living organisms serve two essential purposes. The first is that the properties of any organism such as color, size and shape can be associated with its name, so that we can infer the information on an organism through its name alone; for instance, the word “mouse” automatically communicates the intrinsic characteristics of this animal. Second, the name is essential for communication, and the more widespread the name is, the better the communication between people. These roles of information and communication of names are equally applicable to scientific and vernacular names. However, since the publication of the tenth edition of Sistema Nature (Linnaeus 1758) and after a number of issues of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature to the latest revision (ICZN 1999), scientific names acquired additional functions, such as being unique and universal, both characteristics not shared by vernacular names. However, the vernacular name is the first thing we know about a mammal (Verts and Carraway 1998); thus, early in life we learn names such as “cat” or “dog”. These common names, which we learn from childhood or by interacting and communicating with others in adulthood, are key because they remain in our memory and are part of our common sense. Ultimately, these play an important role in meeting the need to identify and have in place an efficient communication means about a specific kind of mammal (Verts and Carraway 1998). Another advantage of vernacular names vs. scientific names is that, outside of the academic environment, the latter are little known, unfriendly, and difficult to learn and remember. The lack of knowledge of Greek and Latin roots do not allow to understand and express their meaning to our partners (Álvarez-Castaneda and Alvarez 1996). In Spanish, vernacular names are little used in scientific literature; in fact, there are questions and discussion as to the definition of common, vulgar and vernacular names (Mones and Mones 1991). Here we define common name as the one used by ordinary people, in most cases at the local level, and generally in little known languages or dialects; this is the case of “citli”, a name of Nahuatl origin that refers to the hare (Lepus sp.; Sanchez 1985). Vernacular names are those used in a regional context. These are usually designed by zoologists, and their use has expanded VERNACULAR NAMES OF MAMMALS over time; an example is the name “murciélago magueyero” (long-nosed bat) mentioned by Arita and Humphrey (1988) to refer to the species of the genus Leptonycteris, the use of which became subsequently widespread. Vulgar name refers to any of the previous two. It must be recognized, however, that in many cases the distinction between these two types of names is ambiguous or unclear. For example, the vulgar names coyote (Canis latrans), ocelot (Leopardus pardalis), and temazate (Mazama sp.) have their origin in the common names of the Nahuatl words “coyotl”, “ocelotl”, and “temazatl”, respectively. In English, the use of vernacular names is extremely widespread even in the academic environment. It is commonly used in the description of species (e. g., Porter et al. 2017), being used in taxonomic monographs since the end of the 18th century (Kerr 1792; Allen 1894; Merriam 1918), as well as in monographs at the state level in the English language (Hall and Dalquest 1963; Anderson 1972, SánchezHernández et al. 2016). In addition, it is traditionally used in taxonomic list of the mammals of North America (Jones et al. 1973; Hall 1981; Wilson and Ruff 1999; Baker et al. 2003; Reid 2006) and of the world (Wilson and Cole 2000; Wilson and Reeder 2005). U.S. researchers discovered the advantages of the vernacular name, namely that it improves the efficiency of communications by having names in their own language. These names are even more frequently used in the academic environment even when the scientific name is known, and because vernacular names can contribute to resolve taxonomic or nomenclature issues since, in many cases, these are more stable than scientific names (Jacks (...truncated)