Talk:Ethnotaxonomy

"Folk taxonomy" as synonym for "ethnotaxonomy"?[edit]

While "ethnotaxonomy" may refer to both the naming systems and the study of them, quite a number of sources treat "folk taxonomy" as a synonym of the former. For example (emphasis added):

"It has long been recognized that the way people classify animals for symbolic or utilitarian purposes can differ significantly from their 'general purpose' classification of animals (Berlin 1992)—their ethnotaxonomy or folk taxonomy." (Gregory Forth. 2013. "Symbolic Lizards: Forms of Special Purpose Classification of Animals among the Nage of Eastern Indonesia." Anthrozoos 26(3):357-372)
"Common names are also referred to as folk taxonomy or ethnotaxonomy (classifications influenced by culture, etc.)." (Introduction to Anthropology. 4.2 What’s in a Name? The Science of Taxonomy. OpenStax.org [accessed 23 July 2022])
"An ethnotaxonomy, or folk-taxonomy, is a word field that is ordered in popular-science, not scientific, structure." ("Some aspects of modern diachronic onomasiology" *.. (n.d.) >The Free Library. (2014). Retrieved Jul 23 2022 from https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Some+aspects+of+modern+diachronic+onomasiology+*.-a093083052 )
"Ethnobiology can be still further subdivided into folk taxonomy or ethnotaxonomy – which studies how traditional communities classify, identify, and name their natural resources." (Emmanoela N Ferreira,, et al. 2009. "Folk classification of the crabs and swimming crabs (Crustacea – Brachyura) of the Mamanguape river estuary, Northeastern – Brazil." J Ethnobiol Ethnomed. 2009; 5: 22)
"Names are thè currency of systematics, and there are two kinds of systematics in ethnobotany, scientifìc or Western systematics and folk taxonomy or ethnotaxonomy. (Douglas C. Daly. 1993. "Systematics and ethnobotany: what’s in a name?." Delpinoa, n.s. 35-36: 3-14. 1993-1994)

So, should there be a proposal to merge the WP articles on these two into one article? If not, it would be helpful for the articles in question to explain what differences justify separate treatment. --A12n (talk) 01:17, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Quite a bit of the text of this article is about colors and kin, not classifying organisms. I'm not aware of the term ethnotaxonomy being used for anything but classification of organisms. If it isn't, the material on kin and colors doesn't belong. If it is, that might be a difference with folk taxonomy (which I'm also not aware of being used for anything other than organisms). Of course, there are other aspects of the natural world where there is a Western scientific classification, which may also have ethno-/folk taxonomies. E.g. rocks and minerals; I don't think folk taxonomies in geology have been studied much, but they could be (Hawaiian terms for different types of lava have been adopted by Western geology). Plantdrew (talk) 02:12, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]