Hawaiian fish names, common names, and scientific names

Before I really start blogging, I want to start with one thing - I will probably be using a lot of Hawaiian fish names. In my first video, I also used the so-called "common" names of the fish as well, but I will be trying to use the Hawaiian names where I can. Why?

For me, as a transplant here in Hawaii, I have a sort of foreign perspective - I didn't grow up here, so I don't know all these places the way a local would. But I fell in love with it and I have lived here for a while (more than 5 years now, though on and off). The reef ecosystem in particular is something that has captured me. I love the fish, the urchins, I get excited even seeing healthy coral, I love the adventure of finding new places. One part of that was to actually learn what I was seeing.

I am still very much in the middle of that process, but right at the beginning I decided to learn the Hawaiian names of things. My original motivation was to be able to understand the spearfisherman and locals, who use Hawaiian names. I was going to spearfish myself... Before I got a bit sidetracked. However, using the Hawaiian names has come to mean more than that to me. I am here on Oahu and I am looking at the life in Oahu. It's a bit absurd that I would use English names for fish here, isn't it? English itself is a language from a temperate island in the North Atlantic. I'm in the tropics in the middle of the Pacific ocean! 

The names of things matter. For scientific purposes, using scientific names is essential. A scientific name is (ideally) a pointer to a specific living thing, and designates the relationship of that living thing to other living things. A "common" name in English puts a certain claim on the things named - that they somehow belong to a world where English is the "correct" way to name things. Yet these things already had names, just as the place has a name, and just as trees like koa and 'ohi'a have names. For ocean life, it's complicated by the fact that each of these fish gets a different name in every place, so a fish with a worldwide distribution like kahala (greater amberjack) will have dozens of names in dozens of languages. Still, it makes sense to use the Hawaiian names here. Doubly so for endemic species which are only found here, like kumu.

I won't say this as an absolute - I will use the common name HERE. When I talk about menpachi I will call them menpachi because that's what they are commonly called here, though their "proper" Hawaiian name is 'u'u. When I talk about moray eels, I am going to use a "common" name or scientific name because Hawaiian calls them all "puhi" without differentiating between different species much, and the same with butterfly fish which only have a few names. I'm also going to be lax and write without proper 'okina (I'll use an apostrophe) and omitting the kahako (at least until I figure out how to put them in). But I am going to use the Hawaiian names just the same. 

One great site exists about the sea life of Hawaii, a site that I can't say enough good things about: Marinelife Photography by Keoki Stender. Scientific, "common" English names, Hawaiian names, and sometimes Japanese names are included. All of the names of the fish I learned from this excellent site.