Common names

When to use common names

Many plant and animal species have 1 or more common names. Common names often vary between countries and, within Australia, between states and even regions.

Whether to include both common names and Latin names for a species depends on the purpose of the publication. If the publication is for a specialist audience or is a formal taxonomic publication, it is usual to use the Latin binomial, including the author and publication date, at least at the first mention of the species in the text. Afterwards, the author and date can be omitted. A formal taxonomic publication usually does not include common names.

For a general audience or nontechnical texts, it may be best to use the common name. The Latin name is usually included in brackets after the first use of the common name, and the author and date are omitted.

Common names derived from family and genus names

Do not use initial capitals or italics for common names derived from Latin family and genus names:

or for genus names used as common names:

When referring to common names in plural, the English plural form is preferred:

Use accepted local spelling, and do not change the spelling of terms such as sulphur to comply with terminology rules in other science disciplines (see Chemistry terminology):

Capitals in common names for species

Use of initial capitals for specific common names varies. In some fields, common names of individual species usually have initial capitals. For example, in ornithology, both the International Ornithologists’ Union and Birdlife Australia recommend using initial capitals for the common names of bird species; however, common names that refer to a group of species are not capitalised:

Common names are often capitalised in field guides, floras and faunas, and interpretive plaques at museums. For publications in a specific field, check the accepted conventions for capitalisation and hyphenation, and follow them precisely.

However, many plant and animal journals in Australia – for example, Australian Journal of Botany, Australian Journal of Zoology, Australian Mammalogy, Austral Ecology – use lower case for common names, including bird names:

In general texts where no specific guidance is provided, it is preferable to set common names in lower case, unless the name includes a proper noun:

This avoids mixtures of capitals and lower case that would otherwise occur when referring to some nonspecific and some specific names in the same publication. For example kangaroo is a nonspecific common name (because there are many species of kangaroo), whereas koala is a specific name (because there is only 1 species of koala). Use of kangaroos and koalas is less confusing for a general readership than kangaroos and Koalas.

Similarly, if a document contains, for example, common names for plants, birds, mammals and reptiles, use a consistent approach across all groups.