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