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Latin-Chinese Dictionary of Fishes Names


Introduction


Latin-Chinese Dictionary of Fishes Names Introduction In the last 20-30 years, significant progress has been made in the work of fish. However the contents of a few published Latin-Chinese dictionaries of world's fish names are still incomplete and cannot satisfy the increasing demand by the Chinese language people for the purpose's such as research, teaching, conservation, fisheries, or aquatic trade use. Thus, we attempt to collect all currently valid fish species in the world from the literatures and give each genus and species a unique Chinese name. We hope that this dictionary can be used as the basis for the standardization of Chinese fish names for Chinese people in different regions such as China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

According to Fishes of the World (Nelson, 1994), a total number of 24,618 species of fishes have been recorded and a total of 28,000 species is expected to be accumulated eventually. Since then, at least 1,200 more species have been described. In other words, a total number of 26,600 valid species collected should make this book quite complete. All the fish names we collected have been validated by comparing with the electronic database of recent published Catalog of Fishes (Eschmeyer, 1998) for correction and addition of fish names. Also, we have collected some newly described species during the last two years and up to May 1999 and include some species which should be valid but not appeared in Catalog of Fishes, especially the freshwater species in China. Certainly, some species names, even in Eschmeyer's book, still have not been validated. In this dictionary, we have to treat both of them as valid species.

Synonym is the most difficult part to dealt with. This dictionary only keep part of the synonym and most of which have been used in Chinese taxonomic literatures. Thus, if the readers cannot find a scientific name from the dictionary, they should look up Catalog of Fishes first to find its valid name, then look-up the Chinese name from this dictionary. We decided not to cover all synonyms or junior names, because it is a tremendous and almost impossible work. Besides, too many synonyms can not be of any help for the standardization of Chinese names in the future. Including valid species and synonyms, a total number of 29,427 Chinese species names which belong to 5,372 genera are listed in this dictionary.

All species names in this book are written in italic and listed in alphabetical order by genus names. The original author and its published year are attached behind each genus and species. The genera and species names included in this dictionary are mainly valid. Some genus names have been revised according to the most recent taxonomic literatures. Thus, some names might be different from those listed in Catalog of Fishes or those old names often used in China and Taiwan. If some synonymous species names are important and have been used for a long time, we will include them in our list in the first column but its valid genus and species names will appear in the second column. If the name appeared in the 2nd column is signified with a ¡µ mark, this name is a synonym. Then, if this column is empty or contains a name but with a ¡µ mark, then it means that the species name listed in the first column is valid. The family name of each genus is attached in parenthesis right behind the genus name. The classification system on the family level used in this book follows Nelson (1994) (see Appendix I), but not the traditional system of C.S. Rass & G.V. Lindberg (1971) used in mainland China (see Appendix II). All 482 families used in Nelson (1994) are written in capital letters and listed in the 1st column. If readers found some family names behind the genus names but are not listed in the 1st column with capitalized letters, it means that these families are newly added families or are still in debating status. The last two columns are the Chinese names of each species. Because the Chinese names used in Mainland China and Taiwan are not standardized, they are separated in two columns for the convenience of comparison, index searching, and statistic calculation. Furthermore, Chinese fish names have so many equivalents and some species even have five to six different Chinese names, it is almost impossible to include all of them into this book. Also it will not be useful to the standardization of Chinese names. Therefore, only the most representative Chinese names used in Mainland China and Taiwan are chosen and listed by the authors. For those species that distributed in both Mainland China and Taiwan, an asterisk "*" will mark before that species name in the first column. If there is no * mark, it means that this species has not yet been found in China and Taiwan. If a species has been recorded in Taiwan, then no matter its Chinese name is the same or different from that used in Mainland China, the Chinese name will appear in the column of "Taiwanese name". In other words, this dictionary also provides the most updated fish checklist in China including Taiwan, 4,621 species; or in Taiwan, 2,367 species (excluding the unidentified species). Likewise, for those species with * marks but no Chinese names appear in the column of "Taiwanese name", then it represents that these species only occurred in Mainland China but not in Taiwan.

We also noticed that the Chinese genus and species name should be given systematically and unambiguously. Thus, we use the opportunity of editing this book to revise all Chinese name. In other words, not only each species has its own unique name, each genus also has its own name. In the process of naming Chinese names, we use the following principle: retain those old names which are reasonable and already being used for a long time. Otherwise, we will give new Chinese names based on the etymology, meaning, pronunciation, original descriptors, type specimen locality, or their morphological and biological characters of that particular species. In order to facilitate the standardization of Chinese fish names, continuous effort will be made to update Chinese fish names, all fish names in this book are also available on the internet at http://fishdb.sinica.edu.tw. Finally, one thing we should remind the readers, that is if the readers hope to find a systematic or standardized Chinese name, please use the name in the column of "Chinese name" but not in the column of "Taiwanese name", because part of the Taiwanese names listed here are traditional names not standardized.

The completion of this dictionary, needs to thank Ms. C.Y. Wu, L.Y. Hsieh, & Y.Y. Wu from the Laboratory of Fish Ecology and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, Academia Sinica; and Mr. C.S. Chung, and Ms. H.P. Wu from the Fish Laboratory, Shanghai Fisheries University for their tremendous work in data entry. Thanks also extend to Dr. J.P. Chen, I.S. Chen, and Mr. P.L. Lin, and S.C. Wang at the Institute of Zoology as well as Mr. D.W. Chong from Hong Kong University in proofreading the manuscript. Dr. W.N. Eschmeyer from California Academy of Sciences and Dr. R. Froese from ICLARM assist in checking database work. Finally we thank Professor S.C. Shen of the Department of Zoology, National Taiwan University for writing preface of this book.

To compile and edit this dictionary is a very difficult and time-consuming work, because some literatures are not easy to collect, the change of valid species names and the increase of new species are frequent, we cannot guarantee that all valid species of world fishes are all included in this book. We do hope that the readers will not hesitate to give criticisms and corrections on the current version of this dictionary.


Editors
H. L. Wu, K.T. Shao and C. F. Lai
July 15, 1999

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