|
Sponsored Links
A common name (also known as a vernacular name, colloquial name, trivial name, trivial epithet, country name, or farmer's name) is a name in general use within a community; it is often contrasted with a scientific name. A common name is not necessarily a commonly used name, nor is it necessarily considered less correct than a scientific name (as "common" might imply). Not all common names form part of a classification of objects, but many do. Folk taxonomy, a classification of objects which uses common names, has no formal rules. In contrast, scientific or biological nomenclature is a global system that uniquely denotes particular organisms, and helps anchor their position within the hierarchical scientific classification system. Maintenance of this system involves formal rules of nomenclature and periodic international meetings, such as those laid down by the ICZN.[1] There is some evidence for the deep-seatedness of taxonomy which comes from patients who have, through accident or disease, suffered traumas of the brain. Scientists studying these patients’ brains have reported repeatedly finding damage — a deadening of activity or actual lesions — in a region of the temporal lobe, leading some researchers to hypothesize that there might be a specific part of the brain that is devoted to taxonomy. This turns out to be more serious than the loss of some dispensable librarian-like ability to classify living things. Without the power to order and name life, a person simply does not know how to live in the world, or how to understand it, because to order and name life is to have a heightened sense of the world around us and our place in it. And by locating ourselves within the natural world we are more likely to manage it in a sensitive way.[2] The geographic range over which a particular common name is used varies; some common names have a very local application, while others are virtually universal within a particular language. Vernacular names are generally treated as having a fairly restricted application, usually referring to the native language of a country or locality as opposed to more broad-based usage. A colloquial name may be regarded as of very local use, insufficient to be included in the general dictionaries of the language concerned[3].
|
Common Name Subcategories
Common Name Articles
|
|
