Author: Murray Wrobel
ISBN: 0-444-50433-8
Publisher: Elsevier Science, Inc. - P.O. Box 945, Madison Square Station
New York, NY 10160-0757
Publication date: 2000
Price: $113.50 (292 pages)

My first impression was not so sanguine, however. The description, kindly sent by Janet Kershaw of Elsevier’s book review department, had alerted me beforehand that our reference included 4,185 families, genera and subspecies. Considering that there are about 160,000+ species of Lepidoptera, the 4,185 entries listed by our dictionary constitute only 2.6% of the possible total. Such a population is significant, but not impressive.

When I unwrapped the package, the volume offered all the visual and tactile perks we expect from Elsevier. It is slim, but solid: the binding is finely tooled and the paper lustfully acid-free. Nevertheless, once opened, I was immediately impressed by an obvious peculiarity: The text is sparse, to the point that some pages look almost empty.

I randomly picked some samples:

•  
  • Page 94 lists 25 Latin names: four are translated in all four languages (English, German, French, and Italian); two have three equivalents listed; and five entries have two translations each, while 13 have only one and one has none.

•  
  • Page 128 presents 27 Latin species and families: two of these terms are followed by their common equivalents in three different target languages; while nine have two equivalents; and 16 have only one.

•  
  • Page 57 has 23 Latin lemmata: 13 with one common equivalent; six with two; two with three; and two with four.

Page after page, the absence of most dyads is the norm. Let’s not be fooled by this apparent incompleteness. After all, it is just a reflection of a real paucity of common parlance, the world over. Only the specialists need to be specific, since most of us live quite happily without caring to distinguish one bug from another, and our daily vocabulary fully reflects this general indifference.

After Wrobel’s preventive bibliographical strike, if I wished to verify both the completeness of his scientific listings and the correctness of their common versions, I had only one option left: to surf the Internet.

The Dutchman Jeroen Voogd has put together an elegant site (www.butterflies-moths.com) containing 400 pictures. However, his effort is topped by Enzo Moretto, an entomologist of Montegrotto Terme (Padua), founder of La Casa delle farfalle, the first Italian butterfly park, and the leading authority in wing prostheses for maimed butterflies. His site (www.butterflyarc.it) is linked to another treasure trove (www.ibc.regione.emilia-romagna.it/farnet). Its authors, R. Villa, M. Pellecchia, and G.B. Pesce, would make Carl von Linné proud. They offer a list of the 276 species of butterflies which grace the Italian skies, with excellent pictures of each, organized according to sex, side, stage of development, and supporting plants. (Moths are included here as well, but they are referred to as butterflies. Perhaps it is not politically correct to discriminate against them simply because they tend to be less attractive and often nocturnal.).

Resisting the temptations of over 3,000 images, I did stick with the drab Hesperiidae moths. According to Villa (et al.), there are 17 species of the genus Pyrgus in Itlay. Wrobel includes them all, adding to the list another dozen from North America. Out of the three Italian Spialia, Wrobel does not mention S. therapne, but adds four other Saudi and South African varieties.

Increasing size and range, Villa indicates that the genus Charcharodus is represented by four Italian species. Wrobel mentions them all, adding three more from the Middle East and North Africa. Sloperia Proto is not included in the dictionary, but the Emilian group recognizes only one Erynnis species, the E. tages (our Dingy Skipper) versus the 16 species listed by Wrobel, who covers both North America and the Fertile Crescent.

The three Italian species of Thymelicus, characterized by a lovely orange color, are partially referenced by Wrobel, who skips T. flavus, but adds two North African and North American relatives. The only Italian Ochlodes, O. venatus, is recognized by Wrobel, who adds four more skippers found in America. O. venatus is often confused with the more common Hesperia comma, the only H mentioned by Villa (et al.), whereas Wrobel adds to the list 19 more species from the U.S. and Canada.

The large Heteropterus morpheus, probably the most colorful moth so far, is mentioned by both sets of authors, but the least appealing Gegenes is listed twice online and three time in print, due to Wrobel’s inclusion of the South African G. hottentota.

Common names are much more difficult to find. For instance, one apparently promising site (www.nhm.ac.uk/entomology/butmoth/index.html) offers a catalogue of "Butterflies & Moths of the World: Generic Names & Their Type-species," compiled by Brian Pitkin and Paul Jenkins on behalf of the Natural History branch of the British Museum. It lists 30,976 entries, 23,935 of which are paired to generic names, synonyms, and misspelled names (from Linneus to the Zoological Record of March 2000). The compilation is impressive and exhaustive. Unfortunately "generic" does not mean "common or vulgar," and nothing but Latin names can be found.

Kathy Seddon, of the University of Exeter in the U.K., lists 12 common European butterflies, together with their vulgar names, on telematics.ex.ac.uk/butterfly. I organized that listing in tabular format as follows:

The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) offers a list of endangered and vulnerable Italian members of the order Lepidoptera on its site (www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Network/5557/IUCNLepido.html): 17 in total, with some English common names and no Italian versions. C. Hilton-Taylor, the IUCN compiler, offers 12 pairings which overlap Wrobel’s choices quite nicely. Maculinea alcon is rendered as Alcon Large Blue by IUCN and as Alcon Blue by Wrobel, whereas Polyommatus galloi is Higgin’s Anomalous Blue for Hilton-Taylor and Gallo’s Anomalous Blue according to Wrobel. All other 10 species are matched by both authors, with some partial variations only in relation to Parnassius apollo, which is Apollo for both, but then Mountain Apollo for the IUCN compiler, and Alpine Butterefly or Crimson Ringed Butterfly for Wrobel.

The Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center (NPWRC), operated by the Biological Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey, a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Interior, offers a truly superlative site (www.npsc.nbs.gov). Its curators, P.A. Opler, R.E. Stanford, and H. Pavulaan, have organized the subject matter by geographical regions within the North American continent and listed our winged friends by their common names.

Staying close to home, I checked some of the Lepidoptera found in Massachusetts. Here are the compared results by family:

And by members of the Papilioninae sub-family (Swallotails, according to Opler [et al.], but not mentioned by Wrobel) of the Papilionidae, chosen because of their superior appearance:

If you are looking for Latin-Italian pairings, the choices were much more limited.

The Centro Svizzero di Ricerche Apicole of Liebefeld, CH-3003 Berna, has dedicated a portion of its site to the analysis of the family Pyralidae. "Protezione dei favi contro la tarma della cera," by JD Charrière and A. Imdorf, presents some of the worst enemies of beehives, grain flower, and nuts in general. Among the moths listed, Galleria mellonella is found in Wrobel’s work as well, together with Achroia grisella (he attributes both to the Galleriidiae family). Their Italian names (tarma grande e piccola della cera) are equally related by both sources, whereas Vitula edmandsae (or tarma della frutta secca) and Esphestia kuehniella) or (tarma mediterranea della farina) are mentioned only by the Swiss document.

The site offers three Italian equivalents for Parnassius: Apollo (Apollo); Papillio machaon (Macaone); and Inachys io (Vanessa pavone), respectively. Only the latter shows a slight disagreement, due to Wrobel’s alternative choices of Vanessa Io, Occhio di pavone, and Pavone di giorno.

Here you will find an article by Luciano Süss that analyzes the effects upon rhododendrons and alpine azaleas of the zigene day-moths (mainly Zygena exulans and Z. filipendulae, ignoring the other 25 Italian species). Wrobel lists 19 species, but only Z. filipendulae has two Italian equivalents (Zigena filipendula and Gocciolina di sangue).

If the Italian sites did not provide much information on common names, their French counterparts were much less stingy.

François Panchout has posted a well-documented personal collection, and offers several common names. I have sampled the site while looking for Papilionidae. Here are the results, once more compared with Wrobel’s:

The fine site of the University of Le Havre (www.univ-lehavre.fr/cybernat/pages/lepidiur.htm) offers a very long list of day butterflies of Normandy, with their common names in French and English.

I have checked the butterflies found on farmland:

The search conducted so far is obviously partial and limited, and the sites I navigated are of uneven quality and scope, but the trend is clear.

Wrobel’s work is supported by every source, has a wider linguistic breath, and, like no other reference, usefully discriminates between North American, French Canadian, Australian/New Zealander, and South African usages.

Clearly, the English list is the largest one by far, with the other three languages trailing behind in lemmata and in number of synonyms, but this fact is also expressed by both the printed and the online references.

The récueil might well be limited to 4,185 entries, but it includes almost every butterfly or moth I have found online. Only about 15% of the searched terms (16 out of 103 Lepidoptera sampled) were not included in Wrobel’s list, and even this percentage is deceiving. In reality, out of the 16 exclusions, 9 were scientific names without translation and only 7 were common names, thus reducing the real differences to less than 7%. And this is a field in which a lively taxonomic disagreement has been brewing among the experts on several thousand instances for over two hundred years. Furthermore, in almost every case of perfect agreement, Wrobel offered a wealth of synonyms unmatched by any other source.

Thus, a little, and apparently incomplete, dictionary has emerged as the richest and largest multilingual compilation available to date. Contrary to the ephemeral life of its subjects, this work is destined to join Dorian’s and Wijnekus’ evergreens.