The Chinese invented standardised common Chinese names for most species. The Japanese have standard Japanese names as well. Unfortunately, in languages with several different dialects like German or different traditions like English, I am afraid that there is no way to standardise common names. An approach to standardise common fish names is found in FishBase, but not all people follow this. If in a region there is a long tradition of using a certain name for a species, people will not easily change their habits.

Hi Stam

Indeed this is sometimes a problem. I Always use fish base or Kottelat and Freyhof (Handbook of European  freshwater fishes). There is also a key to marine and freshwater fishes of Britain and Ireland by Maitland and Herdson (Environment agency).

The Chinese invented standardised common Chinese names for most species. The Japanese have standard Japanese names as well. Unfortunately, in languages with several different dialects like German or different traditions like English, I am afraid that there is no way to standardise common names. An approach to standardise common fish names is found in FishBase, but not all people follow this. If in a region there is a long tradition of using a certain name for a species, people will not easily change their habits.

Thanks friends, 

I was impressed with the lack of reference to the common name standardization issue in Europe!  I found lots of American literature - one notable Spanish one (attached). 

Stam

In my opinion, the best way to standardize naming conventions is to standardize them in your own work, and to have a firm set of references to fall back on.  If standardization is the goal, it may be at the expense of your "favorite" name for a particular species, but going with the majority (if you can determine that) might be the best way to move forward.  Good luck!

(Ronald: though Japanese Ichthyologists by and large use the common names given in one widely-used compendium, these are not standardized by any formal rule.)

The nature of common names is that their meaning is originally defined within a given society, and they are not governed by formal rules the breaking of which would have scientific consequences (unlike Linnean nomenclature)

A good example is the name "Whelk", which applies to a coiled marine gastropod - but different ones: Buccinum undatum in Europe, Busycotypus canaliculatus in the USA and Cittarium pica in the Caribbean. There is a published listing called "Common and scientific names of aquatic invertebrates from the United States and Canada" (American Fisheries Society) that is used in legal cases to establish the linkage between US common names and their scientific equivalents, but again, its geographical writ is confined to North America.

Thanks Paul, I am aware of publications such as  "Common and scientific names of aquatic invertebrates from the United States and Canada"; yes they try their best. The issue is the "Lack" of papers on the issue.

Stam

The issue is the lack of a governing body analogous to the ITZN and a consensus among scientists that there is a need for standardization. With more than 5000 years of written culture and thousands of extant languages, standardizing common names (that is, linking each one to a scientific name and thus to a type) across the world would be a staggering and arguably impossible task.

I propose different levels (scales) of standardization. Birds, mammals, fishes are the naturalists staples and are much used. WE should have in every language an official name. And an official english name especially. Its not that complicated. 

I have to agree to Ronalds statement. In languages with many dialects or traditions it will by nigh impossible to enforce a standartisation opf common names.

In addition I think a standartisation could obscure some of theinforamtion contained in the common names. For example in some regions different ontogenetic states of the same species have different names. Sometimes there might even be differentiation based on ecomorphotypes that would be lost if regional names fall out of use.

And from an antropological and linguistic point of view the enforcement of certain common names impoverishes the languages.

I would recomend the creation of reference tables for  common names for different species rather than discouraging the use of regional common names.

(And yes I know this problem taht even exists in some mammals. It took me a while to learn that elk  referces to Cervus canadensis in North America.And when I was in Yunnan for 3 weeks I only learnd after my departure taht the noodle fish or ice fish introduced to the Fuxian Hu is the same species (Neosalnx taihuensis).)

Dear Jens and Ronald and others, thanks for the contributions.

We are now communicating in English; I propose we promote a standardizaiton in the English language at least - for each countries fishes. This is a begining. Then we move towards official common names for each state's main language (because some jurisdictions have more than one language). The issue is to minimize the use of scientific names in all media (and thus popularizing natural history). 

The species is the basic taxon of biology. Although there is disagreement among biologists as to what a species actually is, it may be defined as a group of a distinct kind of organisms that share a common evolutionary history not shared by any other such group. I fully support the idea of standardizing common names which already exist in southern Africa for example Cyprinidae (barbs, yellow fishes, labeos), Atherinidae (silver sides), etc.  In global context we can integrate unique linguistic structure to compliment the world standardization.

Common names are always a problem as the same organism can have multiple names. Even in a single region (such as Australia), the same species of fish, plant, bird, insect etc can have be known by two or more common names. With insects in Australia, we have tried to standardise common names of most significant (agriculturally, etc) insects, and this has largely worked.

A first step would be to publish a list of species for the group for a country. biogeographic region or the world, along with standardised common names. This may need a committee with some authority under the auspices of a government body to achieve this with authority.