Talk:Three spot gourami

Proposed move from Three spot gourami to Trichogaster trichopterus

The species has a multitude of common names, should we consider moving the article to Trichogaster trichopterus? MidgleyDJ 11:23, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi David. "Three spot gourami" is an appropriate common name used to refer to this fish as a species. Most other common names refer to a specific color morph. In addition, FishBase record shows that this name is the legal and designated common name in many English-speaking countries. I think this name is perfectly fine as the title for this fish. --Melanochromis 11:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Melanochromis, I'm not sure I know what you mean by legal, designated common name. I agree re: the use of gold, opaline as these colour morphs are certainly not useful names. "Three-spot gourami" is never used in Australia. The fish are either blue or gold (or sometimes "opaline" ie: greyish) and are sold just by their colour names "blue gourami", "gold gourami", "opaline gourami". The blue-ish form is the naturally occuring colour - therefore "blue gourami" is as good a common name as "three-spot gourami". Baensch lists both names, as does fishbase - "blue gourami", like "three-spot gourami", is used only by one species (T. trichopterus). This certainly seems ambiguous to me. There is, however, only one Trichogaster trichopterus :). Anyone else? MidgleyDJ 12:30, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I can personally guarantee you the "blue gourami" is NOT the naturally occuring color. It might be "a" natural morph, but the common wild ones are the brownish-grayish fish. I knew this because this was one of the fish I collected from the wild when I was a kid. Re:legal and designated common name. "Three spot gourami" is the species legal common name designated by Food and Agriculture Organization and American Fishery Society. "Blue gourami" on the other hand refers to the bluish morph of this fish, not the whole species. And this is one of the most common and well-known labyrinth fish, both as food source and ornamental fish. It doesn't make much sense to use the Latin name as title for such a common fish. --Melanochromis 12:57, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Melanochromis - The "blue gourami" sold here in aquariums are "grey-ish" (much like blue cats). I disagree with the sentiment re: FAO & American Fishery society - neither make "legal" or otherwise common names. There is, to my knowledge, no such thing as a legal common name for fish. David. MidgleyDJ 13:43, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Well if you really believe there's no such thing as a "legal" common name, you probably should contact Fishbase, AFS, and various fisheries organizations and ask them to stop using such term . Re: the blue morph. Have you seen any non-aquarium Three spot gourami? They are not blue at all. --Melanochromis 18:01, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Melanochromis, I'm happy to accept this common name if others also feel it is in wide enough usage. Regardless, I stress FishBase, AFS and fisheries dont make "legal" common names in any sense. Common names are just that, names in common use. The trouble is - sometimes common use is limited to a small group of people. As I've said previously, in the Australian aquarium hobby the blue gourami is never called the Three-spot gourami, obviously if this is limited to Australia then we are the odd ones out and it's probably not worth changing the name. The species is not widely consumed (outside it's natural range) as a food fish, so I think it's main "human usage" would be in the aquarium hobby -- but I am prepared to be corrected if one can buy rollmops with gourami fillets in Norway :-). Cheers, David. MidgleyDJ 21:21, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Mostly pretty well covered here. The natural form is indeed brown. But some comments (partly from Vierke 1988):

• Blue gourami -- Described by Ladiges (1933) as T. trichopterus sumatranus, and believed to be endemic to Sumatra. Definitely a natural form though its exact range in the wild seems uncertain.
• Cosby gourami -- Artificial form of blue gourami T. trichopterus sumatranus bred by an American by the name of Cosby.
• Gold gourami -- Artificial form by breeding a form of "brown" gourami without the blue so only the yellow is left behind, hence T. trichopterus trichopterus if anything.
• Silver gourami -- Another artificial form of T. trichopterus trichopterus not often sold because it isn't very pretty. Not to be confused with T. microlepis.
• Lavender gourami -- Another artificial form of T. trichopterus trichopterus.

The fishkeeping press prefers the use of "three spot gourami" as the common name to avoid people believing that these different varieties are distinct species. But obviously traders and retailers continue to use the individual (but admittedly more descriptive) common names of blue gourami, yellow gourami, etc. For what it's worth, I think this is one example where creating common name redirects to a single Latin name article makes a lot of sense. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 10:04, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Dave, I have not kept non-Australian fish for about 15 years, but when I did, I always knew this species as "three spot gourami" and I have only ever been involved in the aquarium game in Australia. Maybe that was just the group of enthusiasts and aquarium shops I used to deal with in Melbourne. BTW, the Latin name is highly suggestive of the three spot common name, my school boy Latin has long since evaporated but trichopterus would seem to mean something like "three eyed". However this does seem to be one of those cases where there is not a universally recognised common name so it seems to me appropriate for the article to be renamed using the Latin name and for redirects or disambig pages as necessary for the common names. Nick Thorne ^talk 01:01, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Nick - Thanks, must be a Sydney thing then. MidgleyDJ 01:10, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Neale, Melanochromis - I'll leave an invite message to this discussion at Project Fishes & Project Aquarium fishes so we can get some views of others. MidgleyDJ 21:19, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

If anyone still cares about this discussion, there's a really nice essay over at User:Jwinius#Scientific_names_vs._Common_names where IMHO the best solution is explained. Shrumster (talk) 00:35, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

I am reopening this discussion because I am reworking the other Trichopodus species articles and because no consensus was previously reached.

Nomination

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:14, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Three spot gourami → Trichopodus trichopterus – Relisted. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:52, 20 November 2011 (UTC) There are at least 5 common common names which are used depending on the colour morph of the individual fish and all of which are often used in retail to label the fish, the first three and the last of which I come across equally regularly when communicating with fellow hobbyists:

• three spot gourami (562,000 Google results; used for the species and the wild type colour morph)
• gold gourami (163,000 Google results; used for the yellow/gold colour morph)
• blue gourami (84,400 Google results; used for the species, the blue colour morph and the marble colour morph)
• lavander gourami (45,400 Google results; used for pale marble colour morph)
• marble gourami (2,500 Google results; used for the blue marbled colour morph)

…as well as some other common names:

• Cosby gourami (7,360 Google results; see above for description)
• platinum or silver gourami (shared with T. microlepis and T. leerii -> can lead to confusion)

On the other hand, there are 654,000 Google results for Trichopodus trichopterus and Trichogaster trichopterus (I am using both because the genus was renamed less than two years ago and the changes have not become well known about yet). From what I have observed, the use of the common names for this gourami varies in different countries.
Your thoughts on the move would be appreciated (please preface with Support, Oppose or Comment).
Kat (talk) 11:23, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Oppose as per my comments at Talk:Pearl gourami#Requested move. -- Yzx (talk) 18:38, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Support More than one common name in wide use in various locations around the world, it seems to me that naming the article using the scientific name is appropriate with redirects for all other aliases and common names. Perhaps its time we revisited this issue on the fish project as well - Nick Thorne ^talk 05:05, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. What matters is the name that our readers will use to look for the article. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:27, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Layout

I feel that the large space at the beginning of the article should be removed. Anyone agree? --GouramiWatcher ^(Gulp) 15:29, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I might agree, and it's my fault that it's there! Here's what is going on. I was traveling over the Thanksgiving weekend, and saw the page on someone else's computer/monitor, and there was a really ugly run-over of the lead section infobox into the next section, which the "clear" template fixed. Now, I'm home at my usual computer and monitor, and I definitely see what you mean. It's a problem of computer-to-computer. I almost self-reverted, but it occurs to me that there will be other readers who see the page the way that I saw it before. Instead of removing the "clear", would it be an option to reduce the size of the infobox, either by moving the second image that you added out of the box and into the text, or by reducing the size of both images? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:51, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I rearranged the pictures on the page, but there is still the white space there. Any other ideas?--GouramiWatcher ^(Gulp) 15:22, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the clear. On the toss up between having the infobox overlap and having a huge blank space the overlap is better. Overlaps happen all the time from infoboxes, and aren't necessarily bad. Small article like this suffer though, having not much prose but an infobox that would fit in a much better article. I shifted the other photo lower and left to try and improve aesthetics. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 15:35, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I just cut the width by getting rid of a nonbreakingspace. Does that look better? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 15:38, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you! It looks good to me. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:36, 1 December 2011 (UTC)