Common Names: To Cap or Not to Cap?

Posted by Kolby
March 12, 2009

I’m hoping one of my smarter readers (i.e. all of you) can help me out. I’ve noticed that some publications capitalize common names of arthropods and others do not. Is this a personal preference or is there a rule defined somewhere? If there is indeed a rule, are there any exceptions?

Here are two (fake) examples I just made up to explain what I’m referring to:

Non-capitalized common name:

Pachycondyla villosa is commonly known as the hairy panther ant.

Capitalized common name:

Growing to over 40 mm in length, the Giant Bull Ant of Australia mainly eat nectar and honeydew.

Leave me a comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter.

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  • Thanks, Ted. It's a making more sense to me. I'm starting to see how a "hairy panther ant" or a "giant bull ant" are types of ants similar to how "pork" or "poultry" are types of meat.
  • Kolby - I see even so-called "experts" doing this wrongly, but the rules for capitalizing common names are the same as for normal English - proper nouns and words leading off a sentence are capitalized, other words are not. Thus, to use your fake examples above, both common names should be spelled in lower case (unless leading a sentence). In the case of the giant bull ant, if the country of origin was added to the common name, it would be "Australian giant bull ant."
    regards--ted
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