Honey bee or honeybee; bumblebee or bumble bee?
Language is fascinating, particularly the way in which it changes over time to incorporate new words, or old words used differently. In science this has important implications for understanding: semantics matter. With this in mind I’ve been curious about the alternative ways in which authors write the informal names of species. Scientific names (Genus species) should be fairly stable in their spelling and presentation (though not always, especially in the older literature); but “common” names of species vary widely geographically and temporally.
Here’s an example using Google’s Ngram Viewer which is a useful tool for tracking changes in word use over time. Different authors currently use the terms “honey bee” and “honeybee”, sometimes in the same publication. But as the image above shows. historical analysis suggests that “honey bee” is the more traditional term, and that “honeybee” only came into common usage from the start of the 20th century, and by the late 1920s had taken over “honey bee”.
Likewise “bumblebee” and “bumble bee”; despite “bumble bee” having a much earlier usage, “bumblebee” has dominated since the late 19th century:
It’s interesting to speculate about what might have caused these shifts in use, and it’s possible that in these examples it was the publication of especially influential books that used one term over another and influenced subsequent writers. Could make a good project for a student studying how use of language varies in different time periods.
For my own part I tend to prefer “honey bee” and “bumblebee”, but I can’t precisely articulate why; perhaps it’s because in Europe we talk about “the honey bee” as a single species (Apis mellifera) but not “the bumblebee” because there is usually more than one co-occurring Bombus species in a particular area. Do others have a particular preference?
