A Capital

case for common names “of species of fishes-a white crappie or a White Crappie Common names of fishes are an important and often primary means of fish biologists communicat-ing with each other and with the public. Although common names will never replace scientific names, they are indispensable in many areas such as fisheries science, management, administration, and education. In recognition of the important role common names play in communicating information about fishes, the American Fisheries Society (AFS) and the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH) have a long-standing cooperative effort to promote the use of standard common names for species of fishes through the joint Committee on Names of Fishes. The first list of fish names, although not cov-ering all species then known in the United States and Canada, was published in 1948 (Chute et al. 1948). This was expanded in 1960 to include all known species in these two countries (Bailey et al. 1960). The list was revised approximately every 10 years with the last edition being Robins et al. (1991). The next list and the sixth edition is expected to be com-pleted this year and will include the ichthyofauna of Mexico, thus giving a complete list of fishes for all North America. The effort’s success is evidenced by use of standard common names in fish journals and by the adoption and routine use of the common names list by many agencies, institutions, and natural resource educators. For example, many publications on fishes only require the use of the scientific name with the standard common name once, and there-after, the common name may be used. The joint societal effort also resulted in a set of principles guiding the selection of common names. These guidelines include a decision, with which we disagree and which is the subject of this editorial, on capitalization of common names. We strongly sup-port the development and continued updating of standard common names and recognize the impor-tance of the guidelines developed for their use, but believe there are reasons to change the policy on capitalization of common names in English. The com-mon names of fishes by convention have been treated as common nouns, not proper nouns, and accordingly spelled in lower case, e.g., rainbow trout, not Rainbow Trout, and white crappie, not White

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