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Talk:Mustelus mangalorensis

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Common name

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I moved the page from Mangalore houndshark. Neither Fishbase, nor Cubelio's article describing the species list an vernacular/common name for it. "Mangalore houndshark" appears to have been made up for Wikipedia by translating the scientfic name. It's not Wikipedia's place to invent common names (that's original research WP:OR). WP:COMMONNAME addresses commonly used names, not a preference for vernacular names over scientific names. At present, there are 130 estimated Google results for "Mangalore houndshark" and 8,000 for "Mustelus mangalorensis". Results for "Mangalore houndshark" are almost all Wikipedia mirrors, and result from the article residing at that title for the past 3 weeks.

Ebert et al's "Sharks of the World" does list "Mangalore houndshark" as a vernacular name for Iago mangolorensis; I'm not sure if this book is making a taxonomic transfer to a new genus, as I'm unable to view the whole thing online, but I find no evidence anywhere else of a transfer to the genus Iago.

"Mangalore houndshark" may end up being the preferred vernacular name, but Wikipedia needs to follow sources in this matter, not take the lead and invent vernacular names when none have been proposed yet.Plantdrew (talk) 16:37, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]