Talk:Coregonus

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This is one of those names for which WP's "common name" rule completely breaks down. As FishBase shows, it's simply not the case that "whitefish" and Coregonus are synonymous, despite what the ITIS guy says. Better for us to be careful and use the genus name for precise taxonomy, and common name to route people to possible taxa (if they even have one in mind, "whitefish" often meaning no more than "not a pink fish" :-) ). Stan 14:42, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. That may be. Wikipedia distinguishes whitefish from white fish, the fisheries term, which is roughly "not a pink fish"—basically whatever you put in fish sticks or fry to go with chips. (See the "see also" in this page.) I've gotten heat for not being anglocentric enough here, so I try to err on the side of common names—even though I would really prefer all taxa to be under their systematic names with redirects from common names (something I'll never get). Let me get some of these species sorted out a bit more and let's revisit the issue of moving back to Coregonus in a bit. (Coregonus has a history, so it's not a simple move...) —Tkinias 23:00, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It occurred to me to consult my big OED, and for "whitefish"/"white-fish"/"white fish" it has the vague not-pink-fish concept as the first definition, #2 is a synonym for beluga, and #3 is Coregonus specifically. Dunno what to make of that... I've come to take a pretty hard line on common names, generally only use them when the consensus is crystal-clear. Interesting contrast between plants and fish - in plants, genera often have agreed-upon common names, and families don't, while in fish most families have common names, while the genera usually don't. Stan 03:40, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Interesting. Recall that OED lists definitions purely chronologically, without regard to their commonality in present usage. Cf. Merriam-Webster, which has:

1. a : any of various freshwater salmonid food fishes (especially of genera Coregonus and Prosopium) b : any of various fishes resembling the true whitefishes c British : any of various market fishes with white flesh that is not oily
2. the flesh of a whitefish especially as an article of food

I suspect the meaning of "beluga" is obsolete.

Given all this—and that neither OED nor M-W supports the whitefish–white fish distinction, I think a disambig page is in order. I'll make one up and sort it all out when I get a chance. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. —Tkinias 21:37, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Disambig

I've made whitefish a disambig page. I hope this is all clearer now. —Tkinias 23:43, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Coregonus ambiguities/corrections

Copied from Talk:WikiProject Fishes

Coregonus There is an odd reference to a submarine at the end of the coregonus article that probably doesn't belong there. I've left it there, but someone might want to have a look.

The reference to blackfin cisco being extinct is incorrect, and is in fact contradicted by the blackfin cisco page. I'll make the correction. The status of this group is problematic. The proliferation of cisco species in the Laurentian great lakes is based on the work of a single researcher and the subject of debate. Some note might be made of that, but since it's all pretty up in the air, maybe not. I'm new to this encyclopedia business.

I will also clean up the capitalized species names in the section.--Peter3 18:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

OK. I've just started looking at some other coregonus entries and discovered that the submarine business crops up in other species. Doesn't seem to fit. The lake herring/cisco entry is a bit jumbled, with a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with the species C. artedi but relates to ciscos generally. The general bits probably belong in the general Coregonus article.--Peter3 18:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I've written entries for kiyi, northern cisco and shortjaw cisco. I also generalized the cisco (fish) entry to the ciscoes and cleaned up some entries that had duplicate or outdated information.Peter3 15:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inconnu

Hello. I'm new here, but noticed that the FishBase listing is missing Inconnu (Stenodus leucihthys), but there is a Wikipedia entry for Inconnu. I'm basing this upon Lake, River & Sea-Run Fishes of Canada by Frederick H. Wooding.

I thought about editing the page, but got a bit confused about the markup. Then I noticed that the list is according to FishBase, so if it isn't contained there, it shouldn't just be added to that list. However, it would be nice to link in the Wikipedia page for Inconnu to the Coregonus page for completeness.

Derek 15:14, 11 February 2007 (UTC)