A Dictionary of Non-Scientific Names of Freshwater Crayfishes ...

A Dictionary of Non-Scientific Names
of Freshwater Crayfishes
(Astacoidea and Parastacoidea),
Including Other Words and Phrases Incorporating
Crayfish Names
Introduction
Douglas Adams, in The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's
Guide, briefly discussed Macbeth's attitude
toward murdering people—"the initial doubts, followed
by cautious enthusiasm and then greater and greater
alarm at the sheer scale of the undertaking and still no
end in sight."
I had a similar progression of feelings about this
dictionary, which I innocently started because I have
long been troubled by the odd assortment of animals
generally referred to as "crayfish." There was an
initial feeling of "who cares," followed by a bit of
enthusiasm when I discovered others had also compiled
lists of crayfish common names (somebody cares), followed
by an alarm phase when I realized how many
names there are and the impossibility of my finding
them all.
After the alarm phase, there was panic—when I
realized that I was treading on some very unfamiliar
ground. Indeed, I, as a zoologist, was deep in a swamp
inhabited by alien beings such as ethnobiologists,
linguists, and no doubt other things.
C.W. Hart, Jr., Department of Invertebrate Zoology,
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, D. C. 20560 *-
C.W. Hart, Jr.
His ineffable effable
Efanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
T.S. Eliot
I soon realized that I would never get out of that
swamp as long as I continued with the project, so I
decided to proceed and to avoid at least some trouble
by defining myself as a naive lexicographer, sensu Samuel
Johnson—i.e., "... a harmless drudge...." That, I
felt, might lend some frail shelter from my fellow
swamp dwellers.
The scientific identities (in the Western sense), the
non-scientific names, and the distributions of freshwater
crustaceans are important because crayfishes, shrimps,
crabs, and other crustaceans sometimes inhabit the same
watercourses and are often indiscriminately called
"crayfish," "crawfish," or, indeed, hundreds of other
vernacular names by the uninitiated. References to
"crayfish" where no crayfishes live, to crabs where
there are no crabs, and to shrimps where only crayfishes
live not only give rise to questions about the
validity of observations, but to erroneous conclusions.
This, then, is largely a list of the non-scientific
names used locally, worldwide, infrequently, or over a
long period of time to refer to the freshwater crayfishes
belonging to the superfamilies Astacoidea and the
Parastacoidea. Where possible, I have associated those
names with the appropriate scientific names, and also
pointed out where confusion is possible, rampant, or
even intractable. But a dream is usually finer than
reality, and so it is with this. I set out simply to find