Talk:Galaxiid

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject Fishes, an attempt to organise a detailed guide to all Fish taxa and related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the Portal, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. This project is an offshoot of the WikiProject Tree of Life

[edit] Should this topic be renamed?

The genus for most galaxiids (which is a term usually associated with the family Galaxiidae) is Galaxias.

Either this article should be renamed Galiidae or if we wish it to refer to only the Galaxias genus, then the article should be re-written to reflect that.

Alternatively, and assuming we wish to use an English name for the article, perhaps we should keep the name "Galxiid" and then change the intro to use the term family rather than genus and also modify the toxo-box removing the entry at the genus level.

---

Upon reflection, I think I will simply take the second alternative, if others do not like it they can obviously make their own ammendments.

It should be Galaxiidae and merged with the duplicate stub of that name. "Galaxiid" is not really a common name, just the individual-noun form of the Latin, and so our usual practice is to use the full name of the family instead. Stan 14:47, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

--- I take your point Stan, however the terms galaxiid and galaxiids are used commonly in government and fisheries papers and even in scientific papers in Australia, although not as a taxonomic terms, rather as a "common name" for the family. Although I agree about the origin of the word it does have a fair degree of currency. IMO although the word technically is derived from the Latin form Galaxidae, I think it is reasonable to consider thwe word galaxiid to be the English form of the word.

Also, from what I can see in Wikipedia, common names seem to be used for article titles, rather than the Latin names so in this case using the "English" form of the word seems appropriate.

It's common for zoologists to use the "-id" form as a noun or adjective - for instance, my beetle reference uses "schizopodid beetle" as the "common name" for the very obscure Schizopodidae that no non-coleopterist has ever heard of. The downside of our common name rule is that once you get past lions and roses, it's often unclear if there is a common name, and we have to be careful not to present, say, a government paper as evidence of vernacular usage. Googling is a favorite strategy, newspaper ads for a fish store could be evidence, etc. FishBase's collection of vernacular names is worth study too. Stan 14:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Just about to write articles on the NZ freshwater fish that don't have articles, & noticed this page. It seems to be different to all other Family pages I've seen. IMO the title should be "Galaxiidae" & the article should be similar to the standard Family article - the existing chatty stuff about where the species can be found could be in its own section. At present it's hard to find your way around, & there is no one complete list of Genera/species. Happy to do the work if others agree. Cheers GrahamBould 09:56, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

--- I agree with the renaming to Galaxiidae. I'm of the opinion that we should stick to the taxonomically accurate terminology as that is how they are referred to in the international scientific community. The common/colloquial names change with time and are never truly standard/official, and it would be very educational to the non-scientifically-inclined public if we were to refer to taxa by their scientifically-accepted names. Galaxiid/Galaxiids could just redirect to the more-appropriate Galaxiidae. (I also suggest we should start doing this with the other higher-taxa articles on WP.) Shrumster 07:38, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

The naming standard in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes page states that common names should be used for higher taxa when they exist. This is consistent with Wiki policy regarding articles on species. In this case as has been stated above the term "Galaxiid" is in common current use and so the name should remain. Nick Thorne 11:22, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The WP:FISHES "common name" naming refers specifically to higher taxa that actually have real common name counterparts, like "Shark (Selachii) or Eel (Anguilliformes). As for families without true common names, it is commonplace to just replace the "ae" to de-latinize the name. This does not truly constitute a true english common name (for any taxa) but is just scientific prose. Shrumster 13:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC)