Talk:Apatura metis

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved: majority after a month. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 08:15, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

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Freyer's purple emperor → Apatura metis – The WikiProject Lepidoptera uses scientific instead of common names for butterflies. Most butterflies don't have common names to begin with; species that do have common names often have different common names in different parts of the English-speaking world. Lots of common names are ambiguous; many are used for three, four or five mutually disjoint clades. Apatura metis is literally the only species in the subfamily Apaturinae whose article still uses a common name for its title. For easy verification, a list of all Apaturinae species with known common names is being provided here. Relisting see below. Andrewa (talk) 09:18, 26 September 2011 (UTC) Noym (talk) 20:50, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: That's not what Wikipedia:WikiProject Insects#Names and titles says at all, I quote: In cases where common names are well-known and reasonably unique, they should be used for article titles. Wikipedia:WikiProject Lepidoptera doesn't seem to have any more specific guideline. Relisting to allow replies and input from others. Andrewa (talk) 09:18, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

You're right, it's not obvious that Wikipedia:WikiProject Lepidoptera has any more specific guideline, but that's just because it was never formally documented on the project page. Look for example at

• this discussion from 2007, in which seven out of eight participants favor scientific names and the eighth contributor doesn't really oppose them either,
• this discussion from 2010, in which the consensus is restated, this time unanimously, and
• this ongoing discussion, which is about something else but in which everybody tacitly assumes that articles use (or eventually will use) scientific names for titles. The question in this discussion is whether common names should be used in article links; the possibility of using them in article titles doesn't even come up any more.

Aside from that I can only repeat myself:

1. Most Lepidoptera simply do not have any common names. Just browse around a bit. Some genera contain literal dozens of species and just a handful of them have common names.
2. Many common names are useless as article titles because they are ambiguous.
   • Names such as African Small White, Barred Yellow, Black-veined White, Blue Emperor, Coast Purple Tip, Crimson Tip, Emperor Swallowtail, Golden Tip, Marbled White, Southern Swallowtail, Sordid Emperor Sulphur Orange Tip, Tailed Sulphur, Tawny Emperor, Vagrant, Yellow Orange Tip, Wood White, for example are used to refer to two different species each. Eighty-eights refers to two different genra.
   • The name Small White refers to one species, one genus, and one breed of pig. "The Whites" refers to one subfamily and three different genera; so does Sulfur Butterfly. Metalmark refers to one family and one tribe. Orange Tip refers to one tribe, one genus, one species in that genus, and one other genus. Hackberry refers to five species. Empress refers to six species in two genera.
   • Dozens of names, for example Dogface, Grass Yellow, or Punch, may refer either to one genus or to one important species in that genus. Apollo may refer either to one genus or to one of two important species in it.
   • These examples are the trivial ones because these names, while referring to three, four, or five clades each, refere to the same three, four, or five clades everywhere on Earth. Many names tend to mean different things in different parts of the globe. Sulfurs for example, refers to one genus in American English but to one subfamily and two other genera in Britsh English.
3. Many common names that are not ambiguous are regional. Hamadryas is referred to as "the Crackers", "the Calicoes", and "the Clicks" in different parts of the English-speaking world.

The bottom line is that somewhere between eighty and ninety percent of article on Lepidoptera species will have to use scientific names no matter what. Using common names for some fraction of the remaining percent would achieve nothing except make maintenance more difficult. Noym (talk) 10:41, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support the move as per reasons given above. Ruigeroeland (talk) 10:48, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Ditto. Dger (talk) 20:18, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support per the reasoning given. --Kevmin § 13:25, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.