How did you get your name? Some names come from family members. Other names have important meanings. And sometimes, people choose a name because they just like the sound of it! Names can communicate history and what’s important to people.
One kind of fish in North Carolina and Georgia hasn’t had an official name for more than 30 years. Experts shared a study on the Sicklefin Redhorse in February. They officially described the creature and gave it a scientific name for the first time!
The Sicklefin Redhorse is a kind of fish that swims through the Hiwassee and Little Tennessee rivers of North Carolina and Georgia. A scientist first wrote about the fish in a paper in 1990, but that was not the first time people had the animal. The eastern Band of Cherokee Indians are a group of people who have lived in the mountains of North Carolina for thousands of years.
Caleb Hickman, a scientist and expert with the eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, told News-O-Matic about the fish. He explained that Sicklefin Redhorse can grow over two feet long. “They were probably the largest fish folks would have eaten in these river systems in the southern Appalachians,” Hickman said.
According to Hickman, the Cherokee people would have used weirs to catch the fish. Fishing weirs are “stacked stone structures within rivers to funnel fish into a trap,” Hickman explained. “Actually, there are people that are still alive today that did that,” he added.
This first-hand experience and historic knowledge of the Sicklefin Redhorse has helped experts studying the fish and working to protect it. The experts who gave the fish its official scientific name in the recent paper wanted to honor this knowledge. They gave the Sicklefin Redhorse the name Moxostoma ugidatli.
Moxostoma comes from words in the Greek language meaning “mouth to suck” — it describes how the Sicklefin Redhorse eats. And ugidatli is the name the Cherokee people have given the fish, meaning “wearing a feather” in their language. The name comes from the long fin on the fish’s back. Hickman said, “If you look at this fish, you can imagine a feather on top of it — it’s a way of describing it.” Together, the names show the teamwork between Cherokee experts and other experts.
Hickman said Indigenous people need to be involved in studying wildlife because “there are different ways of knowing things.” He added, “There’s science from thousands of years of experience, and then there’s science, where we might use different types of modern equipment.” Hickman explained that through traditional knowledge, Cherokee people knew the Sicklefin Redhorse existed for thousands of years, but modern scientists couldn’t prove it until 2025.
“It’s important,” Hickman went on, “because there are people that have knowledge, that live in a place and then have an experience with an organism.” He said these people “can provide unique information about the way it behaves and lives.” Then, experts can use all that knowledge to create better methods to care for and protect wildlife.
Hickman said one example of this knowledge is weirs. Today, many rivers are covered in dams that can greatly change or stop how the waters flow. Each year, adult Sicklefin Redhorse travel upriver to smaller creeks to have babies. The Cherokee people were careful not to stop the flow of water. “Even the fish weirs that we build, we take apart the tops of them so we don’t disrupt the water flow after each use,” Hickman explained.
“We’re discovering the dams are really problematic in a lot of places,” Hickman said. The dams could make it harder for Sicklefin Redhorse to grow and have babies. “If people would have listened to tribal members,” said Hickman, “they might have never even built the dam.”
Now, experts like Hickman will keep learning about the Sicklefin Redhorse and working to protect it.
By Hannah Marcum
Updated March 5, 2025, 5:00 P.M. (ET)
