Indian Butterflies to Get Hindi Names

Mumbai: Information about butterfly species across the country will now be available in Hindi, along with Marathi. The National Butterfly Naming Consortium Group has been formed on the initiative of various organizations participating in butterfly monitoring across the country. 

 Butterfly scholar Diwakar Thombare has taken the initiative to name butterflies in the Hindi language. On the occasion of International Butterfly Day on 14th March, the names of 221 species have been announced, including attractive names like 'Angad', 'Mallika', 'Jatayu', 'Motimala', 'Kaag', 'Bahurupia'. The state butterfly 'Blue Mormon', popularly known as 'Nilwant' in Marathi, has now been renamed as 'Bada Bahurupia' in Hindi. As soon as the list of the first phase is published, work will be done to get a list of 1,400 butterflies in Hindi. Butterflies have names in Marathi and Malayalam, and this experiment is also being done in Hindi. The experiment will also be carried out in other regional languages. Mythological and cultural references have also been taken for butterfly names

Environmental scholars Anand Pendharkar, Krishnamegh Kunte, Manish Kumar, Dhara Thakkar, Ratindra Pandey, Rupak Dey, and others have been working on the Hindi name of butterflies for six months.

Trivia about Butterflies
1) World Butterfly Day is celebrated on March 14.
2) There are more than 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide. About 1,379 of these species are found in India.
3) There are 40 types of butterflies in the Maharashtra Nature Park in Mahim.
4) Blue Mormon means Neelwant as the state butterfly of Maharashtra.
5) The wings of blue tiger butterflies are black or dark brown in color, and these wings have light blue perpendicular stripes and dots on the top of these wings.
6) Male butterflies are smaller in size than females.