This may sound like a stupid question, but I just don't know the answer. Maybe someone else will. But, who gets to name and rename insects? Do you have to get elected to the job or have a college degree or can anybody off the street do it? And if so, what makes it "official?" I've always wondered this, because it must be quite an honor to be able to do that.

is given to it, we believe, by the scientist who describes it in the literature. One must be quite an expert in a group of insects to be able to describe how this new one differs from all the others similar to it. If you don't know enough, or if your view is very different from the consensus view in the discipline, your name will be pushed into synonymy and someone else's paper will become the standard reference for that group of insects.

Common names can be given by anyone. If it seems to describe the bug, the name will stick over time and others will use it - making it 'common'. We had a plant here near Chicago which had no English name that anyone knew and one of the volunteers named Marcia was upset by that. So we started calling the plant Wild Marcia! And now it is a perfectly good Common name in our part of northeastern Ilinois. Say it here and people will know exactly which plant you mean. Move 50 miles away and no one will know what you are talkiing about!

Some groups of insects, for example the dragonflies, have official English names given to them by an organized group of Odonatologists. These are no longer Common Names, but are official English names that can actually act as substitutes for the official scientific names since they are defined as equivalent to a particular species. It has always seemed a waste to us to define English names when the creatures have perfectly good scientific names. And we like the much more colorful and interesting local common names in English that the creatures have rather than some formal defined english name. We enjoy seeing Blue Pirate or Green Clearwing or Green Darning Needle and don't really understand when someone feels the need to correct folks and say, "No, that's a Blue Dasher or an Eastern Pondhawk", etc. We would say, "Yes, it's a Blue Pirate, if that is what you want to call it, and its official name is Pachydiplax."

Where do the English names come from? Are there records for who christened them with those monikers and a date for it? I'll bet they were named by two different people, at two different times.

I guess it's a little like Paul Simon - the singer named Paul Simon in Simon and Garfunkle, and the deceased Illinois senator named Paul Simon.

On the Moth Photographers Group website the commom name for Hodges #1761 is the Aristotelia Moth...not the Garden Webworm moth. Maybe Bugguide is wrong.

Who do we tell?

Then again, as I mentioned, I did find it referred to as the garden webworm moth on other sites in a Google search...

I saw several references to the "Aristotelia Moth". I assume the best bet would be to post it to the forum.

We'll see what happens.

http://bugguide.net/node/view/145157

but a quick Google search on "garden webworm moth" brought back results of both varieties. Perhaps they share their common name, but that's the only similarity? It makes sense to me that the Hodges numbers are different, since the Latin names are different and they're obviously different moths.

Maybe if you post your question to the forum, an expert will notice and answer.