Re: Florida Flag Fish Forever

[Scott <zerelli at yahoo_com>]

Easy there Dwight. If you look I put the winking
emoticon. It was said in jest, though the original
"common name" is AFF American Flag Fish I believe.
Also, I am curious as to how my using a free email
address denigrates my opinion or knowledge (or lack
there of). I use a free email address so that I can
access anywhere I choose. I promised myself I would
not ever argue with a mindspring customer again, but
it went to far ;-) (<=== that was a joke) Anyhow, yes
you have a right to make up a common name for every
fish you see, but that does not make it legitimate any
more than all the thousands of posters on the web make
the misuse of then and than or your and you're
correct. I will try to do some research on it, but I
am fairly certain that the original "common name" is
American Flag Fish. You are free to call it FFF or
even Martian Algae Eater, and you are no less correct
than those who use AFF. I gotta go feed my Dinner
Plate Cichlids now (you may have heard them called
discus ;-) but those people are wrong).

Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2002 07:29:47 -0500
From: Dwight <boukmn at mindspring_com>
Subject: Florida Flag Fish Forever

>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.


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