Butterfly names

[Blue Jay]

Hi all,
I have been wondering for some time how butterfly names, scientific and common, come about.

Scientific like:
Potanthus omaha
How does "potanthus" come about??? Or any other genus

Common names such as:
dart, swift, sunbeam, mormon, nawab etc

Cheers:cheers:

[Psyche]

The naming of plants & animals were first started by Linnaeus .
Linnaeus placed all butterflies under the genus Papilio (Latin for butterfly) and he used largely the heroes of Greek mythology for the species names.

Later scientists classified butterflies into different genera and families as it is obvious they are not related.
Names are Latin and Neo Latin (latinised words)

For example. Linnaeus named the Common Birdwing. Papilio helena
Helena(English-Helen) Queen of Sparta was the queen abducted to Troy by Paris and thereby starting the Trojan War.
When Hubner erected the genus Troides for birdwings, the Common Birdwing becomes Troides helena.
Troides is an invention by Hubner from Tros + ides, ie there is no such word in Greek mythology. It means descendent of Tros who was the founder of Troy.
Our local subspecies is named cerberus. Cerberus is the 2-headed Hell-hound guarding the gates of Hades (Hell) in Greek mythology.

Later names become more varied & may be after families and friends, countries, towns, words like Sanskrit, Hindu mythology, local words , in short anything.

Examples Trogonptera brookiana. Trogonoptera = trogon-wing: after the metallic green-feathered birds of C. America.:brookiana(new latin) after Sir James Brooke, Raja of Sarawak.
Purlisa(latinised) after the state of Perlis (old spelling Purlis).Quedara : Kedah state -old spelling Queda(r).
Semanga (latinised) after the Semang aboriginal people.
Cheritra Sanskrit for story or folklore.
Hidari irava. Hidari ?mythical Japanese Edo period artist; irava - Tamil for night.
Pemara pugnans .Pemara -from Malay word Pemarah, an angry or belligerent person (latin do not end in h ): pugnans - pugnacious, aggressive.

As for your examples. Potanthus appeared to come from a latinisation of potanth, a south Indian word which I think means small or small person.
Both P. omaha & mingo were thought to come from America. Omaha is an Irish-American name. P. mingo was thought to originate from West Virginia & named after an Amerindian tribe there.

Common names are created by people from whatever strike their fancies.
Darts and Swifts are named for their swift darting flights.
Sunbeams after their brilliant orange colours.
Mormons after the Mormon a Christian sect that practise polygamy (ie several wifes).
Nawabs and Rajahs , after Indian rulers because of their powerful builts and flights.

TL Seow:cheers:

[Archduke]

Hi Dr. Seow,

That is a very interesting read. Thanks for sharing with us what the malay/indian names mean in which help to contribute to the scientific names of the butterflies.

[guldsmed]

But I have to disagree with or qualify two of your statements:



The naming of plants & animals were first started by Linnaeus.

Not really, people had names for plants an animals for thousands of years before Linné (some of his names are actually the old greek or latin names for the same species). What CvL/Linnaeus did was apply a consequent binomial nomenclature to all organisms, consisting of genus name + species epithet.


Later scientists classified butterflies into different genera and families as it is obvious they are not related.

Hmm all butterflies ARE related, actually all or almost all organisms are related. But not all organisms are equally closely related to all other organisms, so putting pierids in different genera illustrates, that species of Delias are more closely related to each other that to species of Eurema, while the genera Deliasand Eurema are more related than either is to Euploea, which is why the first two are in the same family, and the last is in another.

[guldsmed]

Trogonoptera = trogon-wing: after the metallic green-feathered birds of C. America

I do see, that the green colour is closer to the colour of the American trogons (especially to the subgroup known as quetzals), than to the old world species of trogons, but still a bit funny, that the author related them to neotropical birds rather than Asian ones.

Quetzals (5 species in the world, among the famous Resplendant Q of Central Ameria, most of the others are South American):

http://www.google.dk/search?q=quetzal&hl=da&newwindow=1&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=Sp0mT9GKN4md-wbArbGtCA&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CBoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1204&bih=616

[Psyche]

I do see, that the green colour is closer to the colour of the American trogons (especially to the subgroup known as quetzals), than to the old world species of trogons, but still a bit funny, that the author related them to neotropical birds rather than Asian ones.

Quetzals (5 species in the world, among the famous Resplendant Q of Central Ameria, most of the others are South American):

http://www.google.dk/search?q=quetzal&hl=da&newwindow=1&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=Sp0mT9GKN4md-wbArbGtCA&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CBoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1204&bih=616

Wallace states in his book "The Malay Archipelago" that the wings of Ornithoptera brookeana were like the wing covert feathers of the Mexican trogon laid on black velvet.
Rippon was probably inspired to create the genus Trogonoptera by this.
Note the Sumatran subspecies is simply named trogon.

TL Seow:cheers:

[Psyche]

But I have to disagree with or qualify two of your statements:




Not really, people had names for plants an animals for thousands of years before Linné (some of his names are actually the old greek or latin names for the same species). What CvL/Linnaeus did was apply a consequent binomial nomenclature to all organisms, consisting of genus name + species epithet.



Hmm all butterflies ARE related, actually all or almost all organisms are related. But not all organisms are equally closely related to all other organisms, so putting pierids in different genera illustrates, that species of Delias are more closely related to each other that to species of Eurema, while the genera Deliasand Eurema are more related than either is to Euploea, which is why the first two are in the same family, and the last is in another.

My errors here.
I was trying to simplify things without going into lenghty explanations.

TL Seow:cheers:

[guldsmed]

I know Seow, I just found your simplifications a bit overdone :-P

Interesting about the trogons, I guess he meant quetzals then as the resplendent quetzal does reach southern Mexico and is the most beautiful of all trogons. Some even claim that it is the most beautiful of all birds, but I think there are several others in that race... Anyway it is a magnificent bird, and brookiana a superb butterfly...


I must read Wallaces book sometime :-)

[Wanderer]

I must read Wallaces book sometime :-)


try here: http://www.papuaweb.org/dlib/bk/wallace/toc.html

[guldsmed]

Oh thats nice, thank you Tan

[teotp]

In: "A Monograph of the Birdwing Butterflies - volume 2 The genera Trogonoptera, Ripponia & Troides, page 34", under the heading genus Trogonoptera Rippon 1898, Haugum & Low wrote: "The generic name was inspired by Wallace's description and based upon Snellen van Vollenhoven's name trogon for the Sumatran representative of brookiana, quoted as having a certain resemblance in colour and pattern to a magnificent bird from central America and which had been given the name of Trogon resplendens by Gould."

Teo T P

[Psyche]

In: "A Monograph of the Birdwing Butterflies - volume 2 The genera Trogonoptera, Ripponia & Troides, page 34", under the heading genus Trogonoptera Rippon 1898, Haugum & Low wrote: "The generic name was inspired by Wallace's description and based upon Snellen van Vollenhoven's name trogon for the Sumatran representative of brookiana, quoted as having a certain resemblance in colour and pattern to a magnificent bird from central America and which had been given the name of Trogon resplendens by Gould."

Teo T P

Thanks Teo, for the confirmation.
I just checked that the Quetzal was formerly named Trogon resplendens.

TL Seow:cheers:

[teotp]

I just checked that the Quetzal was formerly named Trogon resplendens.TL Seow:cheers:

Thank you for your information too.

Teo T P