Ok, feet first from a neophyte hobbyist. I don't know the scientific names for monitors, it is a foreign language to me (latin to be specific). I recognize alot of the names from seeing pictures along side and from descriptions on various websites and books. If I don't know what the heck someone is talking about, I'll either look for more info or ignore it and take what else I can from the post (usually the later). Eventually the names become more familiar to me, but I still could not spit out the scientific name for my three ackies (but I know the name when I read it).

There needs to be a common name and WIDELY accepted name for monitors. The expansion of the hobby pretty much depends on it (and demands it). The problem is the widely accepted part of the name, as well as determining what is too specific and what is too general.

Dogs have been kept in captivity for many thousands of years, so they have a bit of a head start here, but will make a good example. When you say "German Shepard", people know what you are talking about. There are a variety of German Shepards out there, but you can still pretty much picture one in your mind. There are new "species" of dogs still being recognized which are nothing more than in crossbred species after so many generations or an existing species that has been alterred through generations of specific breeding (minitures for example). Do these new species have scientific names of their own? Who cares but the dog scientists.

Another good example of common names are daschunds (sp?). You can picture what one looks like most likely even with my horrid spelling. There are long-haired, short-haired, mini, standard, wire-haired and a variety of other flavors of daschunds. Something tells me that they all have the same scientific name, but almost every dog person knows the difference when you use each of the common names and can likely tell you which is which and what the traits are.

My gut feeling tells me that alot of these common and widely accepted dog names came from the breeders and organizations supporting the dog populations (the dog shows, like Westminster).

I guess the point of this rather long post is this... The tool is right here to get a common naming convention started. There is a base to work with already so no one has to pull anything out of the air. It does not have to be as complicated as it has become. Yea it would be nice to know the region a monitor came from, but it is more important to know exactly what people are talking about when someone says "Red Ackie".

Just my $1.45 worth
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-Andrew

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