Talk:goby

goby
My grandmother (born 1889 came from the Pickering - Thornton-le-Dale area of North Yorkshire), used to recite red and green, seldom seen, except on a goby's back.

meaning do not wear red and green together. Apparently, goby was a dialect word for the village idiot. I put this out there merely as an alternative meaning for the word goby. I do not know the etymology of the word in this case. Cescabel (talk) 12:05, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

RFV discussion: March–December 2023
Rfv-sense: def. 1: A gudgeon, such as Gobio gobio."

This is an easy mistake to make as the type genus for Gobiidae (def. 1)) is Gobius. Only we and those who seem to be copying us, have this definition. Etymologically gobio is an inflected form of gobius ("gudgeon"), but gobius has been appropriated for fish that somewhat resemble gudgeons, but are not very closely related.

I am not sure how to find instances of use of this mistaken def. or whether to call it mistaken. It can be found in aquarium, fishing, and wildlife references, but we don't seem to deem such occurrences as mentions not uses. DCDuring (talk) 14:02, 28 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Cited, I think. I can also find goby used in the names of various other fish which Wikipedia assigns to the family Oxudercidae, not Gobiidae, but on closer inspection Wikipedia seems to regard those families as interchangeable. E.g. Freshwater Fishes of North-eastern Australia has Stenogobius psilosinionus as bare "goby", and Awaous acritosus (which Wikipedia says is in the order Gobiiformes, family Oxudercidae), Chlamydogobius ranunculus (WP: order Gobiiformes, family Oxudercidae, subfamily Gobionellinae), various Glossogobius species (WP: order Gobiiformes, family Gobiidae), Mugilogobius notospilus (WP infobox: order Gobiiformes, family Oxudercidae, subfamily Gobionellinae; but Wikipedia article body says family = Gobiidae), Psammogobius biocellatus (WP: family Gobiidae), two Redigobius species, Schismatogobius species, Sicyopterus lagocephalus, and Stiphodon alleni as varieties of goby (e.g. "Roman nose goby", "tadpole goby", "false Celebes goby", "rabbithead cling-goby", "Allen's cling-goby"). I can also find a book which refer to Kessler's goby as being in Gobio, but this is outdated as it has been reassigned as Romanogobio kesslerii. - -sche (discuss) 16:28, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I try to have large derived terms sections for vernacular organism names like goby with taxonomic names to suggest that any organism called 'X goby' might be called 'goby' by simply dropping the first part of the "correct" full vernacular name, which is often not really commonly used. In this case I haven't added a broad sense of goby referring to the current range of taxonomic families and genera. BTW, I also try to have derived terms for basic taxonomic names like Gobius. I will look at this particular entry and the issues you have raised about it more closely. DCDuring (talk) 22:16, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Goby is particularly fecund in producing derived terms. Fishbase lists more than 500 used in Australia. DCDuring (talk) 22:36, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The quotes look good enough to me. I'll have to think about how to either tell users or let them figure out for themselves that this is a second-rate use of the term. (Maybe it isn't.) DCDuring (talk) 01:01, 25 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Passed, then. - -sche (discuss) 19:26, 22 December 2023 (UTC)