Dinosaur common names?

[CMIPalaeo]

Giving prehistoric species common names has been an off-and-on pet project of mine for some time now, and I found this while googling to see if anyone else had similar ideas to mine. If it's of interest to anyone, here are a few things I've come up with, and wouldn't mind some feedback on...

'prosauropods' - wyrms, lindworms, etc (based on their sort of dragonish appearance, and Plateosaurus being referred to as the 'Swabian lindworm')

apatosaurines - brontosaurs
diplodocines - diplodocs?

titanosaurs - titans

spinosaurs - fisherkings

carcharodontosaurs - landsharks

large tyrannosauroids - tyrants
alioramins - narrow-nosed tyrants
small tyrannosauroids - despots
proceratosaurids (or at least those known to be crested, though I suspect this is probably all of them) - crowned despots

ornithomimosaurs - struthiomimes?

oviraptorosaurs - oviraptors? (they're often informally referred to as such anyway, and it's not a hard name to manage)

dromaeosaurs - raptors (yes, I know that's birds of prey, but nobody CALLS them that - they're all hawks, eagles, hawk-eagles, buzzards, etc)

troodontids - troodons? (again, a pretty regular informal name for the group and not a hard name to manage)

nodosaurids/polacanthids - hoplites, perhaps also polacanths?

protoceratopsids - hogparrots

orodromines - diggers? orodromes?

hadrosauroids - duckbills
lambeosaurines - [crest morphology]-crested duckbills (eg, Olorotitan arharensis would be fan-crested duckbill, Parasaurolophus walkeri would be Walker's tube-crested duckbill, etc)

[antorbitalfenestrae]

I was bouncing around an idea with a friend of a jurassic park-like situation with living dinosaurs and their common/vernacular names a little while ago. we thought about using names sort of based off of their scientific names sometimes, such as tyrannosaurs being called "rexes" and dromeaosaurs being "raptors". T. rex or its equivalent would be the Hell Rex actually, since it's from Hell Creek. There were also other things like "razorbeasts" for coelophysids that were less related to the scientific name and more about speculative appearance/behavior. It would also be similar to bird/lizard names with specific names being tied to life appearance...

[Dobber]

Great thread. I have often wondered why we stay with the scientific name so often with dinosaurs but not most extant animals.

Chris

[stargatedalek]

I've never been a fan of common names, I find they just confuse everything. Vernacular names however, I suppose I could understand those being used.

[Halichoeres]

I've never been a fan of common names, I find they just confuse everything. Vernacular names however, I suppose I could understand those being used.

What do you think is the difference between vernacular names and common names? I use those phrases interchangeably.

[stargatedalek]

I've never been a fan of common names, I find they just confuse everything. Vernacular names however, I suppose I could understand those being used.

What do you think is the difference between vernacular names and common names? I use those phrases interchangeably.

If I'm recalling this correctly a vernacular name is one that is assigned upon the animals discovery and is the intended or "standard" name for the animal, whereas a common name is one bestowed by the general public's usage.

[Patrx]

The toughest thing about this concept if that common names are so often derived from colors, patterns, and behavior - which are almost invariably known unknowns when it comes to nonavian dinosaurs. There are some exceptions, though. Maybe Sinosauropteryx prima could be called "ringtailed brushbird" or something?

Matt Martyniuk had a bit of fun with the names in his Field Guide to Mesozoic Birds and Other Winged Dinosaurs, wherein the "common names" are based on translations of the scientific names. For example, Microraptor zhaoianus became "Zhao's small raptor".

[Newt]

SGD- That's the gist, though I'd argue that common names are a subset of vernacular names, and what you refer to as vernacular names I'd call standard vernacular names.

Some examples for our fishy friend Halichoeres - the American Fisheries Society's English names for fish are standard vernacular names, created by and intended for scientists, naturalists, managers, etc. Many of them are taken from pre-existing common names given to those fish by laymen, but others are, of necessity, made up. Most fish species don't have common names. Who but a naturalist distinguishes between all the various sorts of shiner or darter or redhorse or madtom? And many fish have multiple common names (bowfin/grinnel/mudfish/choupique/shoepike, or drum/sheepshead/gaspergou, etc.), but only one can be the standard vernacular name (at least in any one set of standard names - there are often overlapping or competing sets, and of course different sets for different languages).

[Newt]

Matt Martyniuk had a bit of fun with the names in his Field Guide to Mesozoic Birds and Other Winged Dinosaurs, wherein the "common names" are based on translations of the scientific names. For example, Microraptor zhaoianus became "Zhao's small raptor".

I felt Martyniuk's common names were a waste of space. For one, they're too elaborate (we say "puma", not "concolorous cat"), and for another they don't distinguish groups (most common names work something like Linnaean names, in that they have a general term and one or more modifiers). His strategy would have worked that way if he was treating more polytypic genera, as each generic translation would have remained the same, but that's not the vert paleo way.

I know, it was part of the whole field guide gimmick, and it wouldn't have bothered me if he'd presented them as etymologies, but they're just too awkward and un-useful as common names. Just my 2 cents.

[Halichoeres]

SGD- That's the gist, though I'd argue that common names are a subset of vernacular names, and what you refer to as vernacular names I'd call standard vernacular names.

Some examples for our fishy friend Halichoeres - the American Fisheries Society's English names for fish are standard vernacular names, created by and intended for scientists, naturalists, managers, etc. Many of them are taken from pre-existing common names given to those fish by laymen, but others are, of necessity, made up. Most fish species don't have common names. Who but a naturalist distinguishes between all the various sorts of shiner or darter or redhorse or madtom? And many fish have multiple common names (bowfin/grinnel/mudfish/choupique/shoepike, or drum/sheepshead/gaspergou, etc.), but only one can be the standard vernacular name (at least in any one set of standard names - there are often overlapping or competing sets, and of course different sets for different languages).

Or like the AOU list. So Newt, you're calling those naturalists' societies names the "standard vernacular" names? The field guide names, essentially? I guess I don't distinguish between "standard" and nonstandard English or Spanish names. I don't study fish from Anglophone North America, so I've never bothered to learn most of them, and most of the fish I do study don't have established vernacular names in any language. I'm going to keep using the terms interchangeably, and if someone calls a bowfin a dogfish I'll consider it a regionalism.

[Newt]

Yeah. The filthy birders started it; before that, professionals used Linnaean names, everybody else used common names, and all was well with the world. But birders wanted names that were standardized across entire countries if not continents, but they didn't want to learn Latin names. Then in the 70s other biologists started coming down with birder envy or something.

I can't speak for other groups, but herpetologists and mammalogists (as well as the filthy birders of course) do take these things seriously. I have often heard a student being chided for saying "water moccasin" instead of the more specific "cottonmouth", or "eastern pipistrelle" instead of the more up-to-date "tri-colored bat". Botanists too, for that matter, though they seem less uptight about it. I like to talk about tree-toads, swamp-wampers, red-headed scorpions, hoopsnakes, and so on just to annoy them.

Ah, pedantry.

[Newt]

Also, tetras<minnows. 

[Halichoeres]

Also, tetras<minnows. 

Ha. I don't see any shiners in Colombia post GAI, but tetras are already up to Texas. BOOM

[Newt]

Pfff. Maybe they just don't want to invade South America! Cyprinids own the northern hemisphere, and they only allow a few tetras to live in Africa out of a sense of pity. Charity for Characins. 

In all seriousness, I do wonder about post-GAI aquatic biogeography. Obligate freshwater species seem to have been able to move north more easily than south, while semiaquatic things that can distribute themselves overland have no such bias (see all the northern turtles that have made it to the Amazon, for example). Maybe there was a sort of northward-rolling wave of temporary riverine connections (shared estuaries or headwater piracy) that only allowed travel in one direction. Ictalurids, centrarchids, cyprinids, percids, and catostomids, as well as several non-piscine freshwater groups, are all contained to the Nearctic with basically the same southern boundary; I can't bring myself to believe that that common pattern is due to competitive exclusion.

And maybe I should actually do some reading instead of just speculating. Hmm.

[Halichoeres]

I think there are a few things going on. One is that the Magdalena and Atrato rivers flow north, and would have had slightly broader deltas 5-8 million years ago. Another might be that warm water South American fish were able to tolerate lower oxygen levels and so died less during floods that temporarily connected drainages (Honduras and Nicaragua have broad, fuzzy-bordered floodplains in the east, for example). Stream capture/piracy probably helped a lot, too. With the exception of the cyprinodontids, estuaries probably didn't help much, because tetras and cichlids can only tolerate minimally brackish water as far as I know.

I agree that the competitive exclusion hypothesis is probably not the biggest factor. There's also the old duck foot hypothesis, which, hey, I guess maybe.

[Newt]

Thanks. Something to chew on...

Oh, and apologies for the thread derailment. So, about them common names...the whole topic makes me think of the names used in the Land Before Time movies. Look out, it's a Sharptooth! Ugh.

[CityRaptor]

Dinosaur common names would probabaly be something like that. Or they might be a bit more original, like in Xenozoic, where the Tyrannosaurus is called a Shivat and the Triceratops is known as Mack and Pteranodon as Zeke, to name a few examples. Or a mix of both.
Keep in mind that in this other world scenario, they are the common animals. So they likely would have original names and then probably some variations of those like is the case in our world i.e. in case of bears.

Dialogue might be like this:
"Is that a Devil Beast?"
"It's for sure not a Honker!"
"I would rather encounter a Shivat. Sure, those are stronger, but the Devil Beast is faster!"

[Halichoeres]

I for one favor calling them things like "Fred" or "Beulah."

[Newt]

I nearly got run down by a flock of high-gaitered cragsnagglers!

[CityRaptor]

You think that is bad? I once tripped over a Wyrm and was nearly eaten by a Gourmand. She thought I was dead.