Florida Flag Fish Forever

[Dwight <boukmn at mindspring_com>]

>Discuss the pros and cons of wheter the Florida Flag
>Fish is named correctly...

This misses the point.  There is no "right" or "wrong" in a common name.
You might as well try to argue that Siamese Fighting Fish is "wrong" as a
common name and insist we all call the fish a Betta.
This is just as pointless.
 
Scott:

>There is no Florida Flag Fish. It is the American Flag
>Fish. The people calling it Florida Flag fish are
>wrong. ;-)

I promised myself I'd avoid being drawn into another FFF fracas.  REALLY I
did!  Especially by someone using a free email address.  The list has seen
so much carnage lately and there seems so many more important things to
discuss.  I for one, have done my best to avoid the entanglements since
they have gotten done right dangerous lately. But this is one for the
newbies:  Florida Flag Fish is a common and accepted name for Jordanella
floridae far and wide.  This name appears in online publications, written
publications, pet stores, wholesalers....you name it.  The fish in a native
American Killifish that evolved in Florida and is also now found in patches
of south GA.  The arguements on both sides for the name Florida Flag Fish
or American Flag Fish are logical and quite valid.  The AFF people base
their name on the way they think the fish looks like. Under certain
lighting conditions they think they see patterns that resemble the American
Flag.  We FFF people base the name on its undisputed region of origin (our
warm state of Florida) which is also what the scientific name is based on.
A happy medium was long ago reached of "we'll agree to our own preference
of name, while seriously IDs are done with the scientific name Jordanella
floridae".   I count several in the "American Flag Fish" crowd as my
friends:-) 

The only people who want to make an issue of insisting on AFF as a "right"
common name and that the FFF people are "wrong" only want a fruitless
arguement, since they are in no position to insist on the rightness
wrongness of a COMMON name that has historical, regional, national and
international acceptance.  Please check the archives.  Thankfully, they are
very, very few such insistant individuals who want to try to "bully" the
Florida Flag Fish name out of existence to satisfy their own egos.  Perhaps
just one or two.  It is testiment to their futility that one or two of them
try to lable us FFF people as "wrong" periodically that they think they are
losing the newbies.  We FFF people never call them wrong.  We think they
have a right to any common name they choose for Jordanella floridae...as do
we.  Its called freedom of speech.  Not an insignificant concept as we see
how costly it is to defend that freedom against bullies.