Naming South African frogs and reptiles in nine Indigenous languages

Abstract

Scientific taxonomy, as a standardised means of communicating about wildlife, might have limited use or relevance for wildlife conservation stakeholders with minimal understanding of scientific names. Indigenous language names can improve species-specific communication with non-expert conservation stakeholders due to their familiarity. Indigenous names for wildlife are, however, not specific to all scientifically described species and are seldom documented for wider use. To have a folk-formal taxonomy that is familiar to non-expert stakeholders in herptile (amphibians and reptiles) conservation and useable by experts, we conducted the first comprehensive analysis of nine South African Indigenous cultures’ naming and classification of herptiles based on Indigenous language names recorded from an online questionnaire and existing literature. Etic and emic analyses of the collected names revealed the underlying guidelines of folk taxonomy and its comparability to scientific taxonomy respectively. Furthermore, taxonomic correspondence analysis provided an understanding of the correspondence between scientific species and Indigenous language delineation of herptile diversity. Multiple scientific species are generally grouped together into a single folk taxon based on observed similarities and only a few Indigenous language names are specific to scientific species. The underlying guidelines of folk taxonomy and their comparability and correspondence to scientific taxonomy were the basis for extending the generalised Indigenous names of herptiles into a comprehensive list of names for South Africa’s 543 scientifically described herptile species (136 frog and 407 reptile species) in the nine official South African Indigenous languages.