The names of southwestern European goats : is Iberian ibex the best common name for Capra pyrenaica ?

The names of southwestern European goats: is Iberian ibex the best common name for Capra pyrenaica? The common name designated to a species is important because it connects specialists with non–experts. The matter of the correct common name is relevant to the conservation and management of conspicuous or flag species. The English name 'Spanish ibex' to designate Capra pyrenaica is extensive in the scientific literature, and some have defended its appropriateness. However, in our opinion, it is not the best term to designate this species. We propose that 'Iberian wild goat' should be used. Herein, we review the etymology, history, taxonomy and public use of the names used to designate goats (domestic and wild) in southwestern Europe during the last two millennia. Used first by Pliny the Elder, the name 'ibex' has been applied most often for the Alpine wild goat (C. ibex), and few authors applied this name to C. pyrenaica until the 20th century when some influential works extended its use in the scientific literature. Adult males of C. pyrenaica have lyre–shaped, and typically smooth horns that do not match the ibex morphotype, which has scimitar–shaped knotted horns. Although C. pyrenaica and C. ibex are probably phylogenetically close, their common names do not necessarily have to match. The rules of common names differ from those of scientific names. Cabra montés or cabra brava (wild goat) is the common name used by most authors in the Iberian peninsula. This name is deeply entrenched in the Iberian languages and has been used since the earliest references to the species in mediaeval times. We propose the adoption of 'Iberian wild goat' for legal and scientific communication and when interacting with the media.


Introduction
As elements of animal production, hunting and mythology objects, goats (Capra genus) have attracted much attention throughout human history. The naming, description and classification of goats in southwestern Europe can be traced back to the first books of natural history by the Greek and Roman classics (Aristotle and Pliny the Elder, among others). The nomenclature and scientific classification of goats has been varied and controversial over the past two millennia ; appendix 1). Until Linnaeus and even later, the nomenclature was confusing, with common and pseudoscientific names being used interchangeably (Jonston, 1650;Pennant, 1793). Recently, with the generalization of molecular techniques, great advances have been made in the phylogeny of the genus, even though this is not completely resolved .
The common name associated with a given taxon is important from scientific, conservation, and legislative perspectives. Common names have biological and practical importance given that they allow everyone from researchers to scientific popularisers and the general public to easily understand which species others are referring to. Usually, these names are recognizable, easy to pronounce and stable over time. The common names of the species should link the scientific world with lay people to increase the species conservation value (Stevens et al., 2014). Conversely, scientific names follow binomial nomenclature and are based on phylogenetic relationships, but they are written in Latin and are difficult to remember.
Capra pyrenaica is a conspicuous and endemic species of the Iberian peninsula, iconic for many nature enthusiasts, conservationists, and hunters. The matter of the correct common name is relevant to its conservation and management. The common name 'Spanish' or 'Iberian ibex' designating the species C. pyrenaica is widespread in contemporary English-language publications. However, a significant number of publications also use the term 'Iberian or Spanish wild goat' (appendix 2). In this work we provide arguments to support this latter option.
This work is divided into four sections. In the first two sections we conduct a detailed review of the names that goats have received in southwestern Europe, as well as the history of their taxonomic classification. In the third section we discuss the usefulness of using morphological and molecular criteria in establishing phylogenies, and in the last section we discuss the conservation value of common names regardless of the phylogenetic classification of the taxa.
We provide arguments to demonstrate that 'Iberian wild goat' is a more suitable common name than Iberian ibex for C. pyrenaica, and given the importance of common names for conservation and management, we suggest that the first term be adopted or used preferably over the second.

Methods
We searched the scientific literature for the origin, meaning, and use of the common names for C. pyrenaica. The search was restricted to the wild goats of southwestern Europe. The search went back to the time prior to modern Zoology (Gessner, 1551;Linnaeus, 1758), including the classical Natural History texts of the Greeks and Romans, which influenced the early modern scientists. We searched classic pre-Linnaean texts and their translations from Greek and Latin in free-open bibliographic databases including biodiversitylibrery. org, thelatinlibrary.com, archive.org, penelope.uchicago.edu, remacle.org, perseus.tufts.edu, bibdigital.rjb.csic.es, reader.digitale-sammlungen.de, es.scribd.com, books.google. es, en.wikipedia.org, gallica.bnf.fr, bl.uk, e-codices. unifr.ch, and private libraries including getty.edu, linnean-online.org, merriam-webester.com, themorgan. org. For some classical texts in Spanish, especially hunting treatises, we used open-free databases such as aic.uva.es, bvpb.mcu.es, datos.bne.es, and especially the diacronic database of the Royal Spanish Academy (corpus.rae.es). Within classical texts, to determine their etymology and historical use, the words associated with wild goats (e.g., ibex, capra, hircus, tragus, goat, Steinbock, bouquetin) were searched. In addition, we sought the opinions of historians and etymologists who were familiar with Iberian fauna, particularly, C. pyrenaica.
Among post-Linnaean documents, we reviewed the history of the taxonomy of Capra ibex and C. pyrenaica based on original scientific descriptions. We also searched for the use of their common names in subsequent catalogs and reference treaties (Pallas, 1776;Erxleben, 1777;Pennant, 1793;Saint-Hilaire andCuvier, 1824-1842;Cuvier et al., 1827Cuvier et al., -1835Gray, 1850Gray, -1852. We synthesized the information to identify the most frequently used common names for C. pyrenaica and to determine how the name 'Spanish ibex' had come into use in contemporary scientific literature. Recent studies (e.g., paleontological, morphological, molecular) on the phylogenetic relationships among species (C. aegagrus, C. ibex, C. pyrenaica) were evaluated.
In this paper, we followed Shackleton's (1997) taxonomic nomenclature for the C. pyrenaica subspecies, although their taxonomic status remains under debate Angelone-Alassad et al., 2017;. The Alpine ibex is considered as a single species: C. ibex, and not as a subspecies (Aulagnier et al., 2008).

Nomenclature of bezoars and domestic goats
Domestic goats (C. hircus) and their attributed wild ancestors (C. aegagrus or bezoars) share a significant proportion of their genetic pools (Naderi et al., 2008;Colli et al., 2015), and hybridization between them is common (Couturier, 1962, p. 527). The genetic similarity is most pronounced in the goats of some Mediterranean islands where they were introduced in the early stages of domestication (between 10,000 to 8,000 years BP) and are currently considered to be subspecies of C. aegagrus (Horwitz and Bar-Gal, 2006;Masseti, 2009;Geskos, 2013).
If it is assumed that C. aegagrus and C. hircus are the same species, the specific name for both should be C. aegagrus based on the Opinion 2027 of the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN, 2003), which, if applicable, assigns to each variety (wild or domestic) the category of subspecies. Although, some refer to the domestic goat as C. aegagrus hircus and the wild goat as C. aegagrus aegagrus, most refer to them as C. hircus and C. aegagrus, respectively. Until a consensus on the specific identity of bezoars and domestic goats is reached, we prefer to use the classical nomenclature for reasons of clarity and simplification.

Etymology of the common names of Capra spp. in Western Europe
Words of Greek origin (aegagrus, tragos, capra?) In classical natural history texts, most descriptions of goats refer to domestic goats (Pliny the Elder, 77 AD;Gessner, 1551;Jonston, 1650;Aristotle and Thompson, 2004;Voultsiadou and Tatolas, 2005). However, wild goats were mentioned as early as in the 8th century (C.) BC by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Both texts indicate that wild goats were abundant on the islands in the Aegean Sea (Buxton, 1892, p. 193). The primary classical Greek authors who mentioned wild goats referred to them as αἶγας ἀγρίας (transliterated aiga agrios), which means 'wild goat'. The contraction of those terms resulted in αίγαγρος (aigagros), which became aegagrus, used to scientifically name Capra aegagrus Erxleben, 1777 (as early as the 5th C. Boe thius explained that two separate terms did not have the same meaning after they had been combined into a single term (Migne, 1874); for example, a hippo potamus is not a 'river horse', and a blackbird Turdus merula is not any black bird; rather, it is a specific species). Today, the common name for C. aegagrus is agrimi, bezoar, or pasang, and some authors  have argued that it is the 'true' wild goat, as opposed to the domestic goat Capra hircus.
One of the several observations about wild goats in Aristotle's 'History of Animals' is a description of their capacity to cure their own arrow wounds (Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, 1883), which was derived from their habit of feeding on dictame (Dictamnus sp.). On that account, this was perpetuated by others (De Funes y Mendoza, 1621;Pennant, 1793;Lindsay, 1911), reflecting the strong influence of classical authors on subsequent natural history texts.
Tragos (τράγος) is another Greek term associated with the common name of Capra which was used as a synonym of Capra in the early modern Zoology texts (Klein, 1751) and also to designate the male goat (De Funes y Mendoza, 1621; De la Huerta, 1624; Graells, 1897). Barney et al. (2006, p. 180) suggested that the term is derived from the ancient tradition of paying Greek actors (tragedians, tragoedus) with a domestic goat. In addition, Greek texts use the word aie (αιε) which is equivalent to caper in Latin (Oppian, 215 AD in Graells, 1897;van Oppenraaij, 1998).
The origin of the term Capra is uncertain. For some (Barcia, 1902), it derives from the Greek word Kápros (κάπρος), which was used to designate the males of some wild species such as wild boar Sus scrofa (Coromines and Pascual, 1984). Thereafter, it evolved into the Latin terms Capra and Caper (De Funes y Mendoza, 1621). In early modern Zoology texts, it was used to describe domestic goats (Gessner, 1551;Jonston, 1650). Apparently, over time, the use of the term became restricted to females, and the terms used for males were tragos (of Greek origin), hircus (of Latin origin), or buck (of Germanic origin). For instance, in Spanish, the term cabra is used to designate females of Capra and chamois Rupicapra.

Words of Latin origin (caper, hircus, ibex)
Caper is equivalent to the Latin word Capra and the Greek aie (αιε) (van Oppenraaij, 1998). De Funes y Mendoza (1621) stated that it is derived from the Latin word carpere because of the goat's habit of browsing (Barney et al., 2006, p. 247). Some attribute caper to the same origin as Capra; e.g., Kapro from the Indo-European languages (Coromines and Pascual, 1984). The term caper was reserved for domestic goats (Linnaeus 1756) and also for castrated males (Klein, 1751). For example, in Spanish, capar is the verb to castrate, and capado means castrated (De la Huerta, 1624;Ray, 1693). In early modern Zoology texts, caper was a synonym of wild goat (capra silvestris or caper montanus or ibex (Gessner, 1551), and to name Capra pyrenaica (i.e. Caper hispanica, Jonston, 1650;Charleton, 1677).
Hircus is a word of Latin origin that originally meant male goat (Gessner, 1551;De la Huerta, 1624;Ray, 1693;Lindsay, 1911). Barcia (1902) suggested that it might have derived from the Sabine word fircus, a pre-Roman Italic people in the 4th C. In addition, some classical authors (Suetonius cited in Barney et al., 2006) stated that the word derived from hirqui, which means 'eye corner', because 'his eyes look side-ways on account of wantonness'. This was also noted by Oroz and Marcos (2004) and by Martinez de Espinar (1644). The latter stated "they have rapid view, able to see on their sides or in front, they have highly slanted eyes". That and other descriptions (e.g., 'dictame', above) were repeated for centuries in natural history texts until about the 18th C., demonstrating that many of the definitions and descriptions of animal species were replicated by one author after another in ancient texts, regardless of their veracity.
Later, in peri-Linnaean texts, the word hircus was used to designate both domestic goats and bezoars (Charleton, 1677;Erxleben, 1777;Cuvier, 1798). After being adopted as a genus name for some goat species (Gessner, 1602;Gray, 1850Gray, -1852, its use was restricted to domestic goats; i.e. Capra hircus (Klein, 1751;Cuvier, 1817;. Although Charleton (1677) suggested that the term ibex is of Greek origin, the consensus is that it is of Latin origin (Klein, 1751;Barcia, 1902). For instance, Gessner (1551) did not doubt its Latin origin ('quod nomen a Latino deductum non dubito') and assigned to it a meaning similar to that of Capricornus ('Ibex, vulgo Capricornus';Gessner, 1602, p. 304). After the description of Alpine ibex by Pliny ) (see below), in his famous book Etymologiae, Isidore of Seville (c. 556-636) was the first to apply the term ibex to wild goats (Lindsay, 1911). His sources were classic texts, specifically those of Aristotle, Suetonius, and Pliny (Oroz and Marcos, 2004). From the latter, he repeated the description of its habitat (the highest peaks) and the legend that describes that when it flees it lets itself fall on its horns, unharmed (Barney et al., 2006;Lib. I, cap. XII, epígr. 16). Isidore of Seville associated the etymology of ibex with avex (birds) and with Nile's ibis because they also live on cliffs, far from human settlements (Oroz and Marcos, 2004;Barney et al., 2006). That peculiar interpretation was repeated in several pre-Linnaean Natural History texts (Gessner, 1602;Topsell et al., 1658). The texts of Isidore of Seville were extremely influential in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, and the errors have been replicated by one author after another until today.
Words of Ancient Germanic origin (goat, stein-bock, bouquetin, ibex?) The Modern English word goat comes from the Old English gāt 'she-goat, goat in general', which in turn was derived from the Proto-Germanic gaitaz (cf. Dutch/ Icelandic geit, German Geiß, and Gothic gaits) and, ultimately, from the Proto-Indo-European ǵ'aidos, which means 'young goat' (cf. Latin haedus 'kid'). In Old English, the male was referred to as bucca (giving rise to the modern term buck), and was replaced by hegote, hegoote in the late 12th C. (Watkins et al., 1975).
Steinbock derives from the Germanic Bock or bod meaning male goat and from the Latin prefix stein meaning rock. The term designates male goats from rocky places, that is, wild goats. In addition to being the current name in Germanic languages, other names have derived from this root; e.g., bouquetin in French , which is derived from Stein-bock through a term permutation. The Italian stambecco has the same origin, as does the term bucardo, which is one of the common names for the Pyrenean wild goat in the Aragonese language (Kuhn, 2008). In his Historia animalum, Gessner (1551) indicated that, in the anglica language, the word Capra is equivalent to gote and the male gote bucke. In Old-English, the term ibex was not used to name the she-goat or the he-goat; rather, the terms were Geiss for females and bucca for males. The English word buck (used also for the male goat) originates from the ancient German word bock. Use of the term ibex came later as a result of the Latin description of the species (Ray, 1693;Linnaeus, 1756). Couturier (1962, p. 7), in the chapter dedicated to the etymology and lexicology in his exhaustive book on the Alpine ibex (C. ibex), investigated the origin of the common name bouquetin and included, among several meanings, the following: "... on trouve encore dans le vieil allemand Ybschen et Krencke; en allemand ancien usité en Autriche ... Stolz (1570) appelait le jeune mâle de 4 à 5 ans Zapfen, le femelle Ybsch et le chevreau de l'année Stökl. En Suisse et dans le Tirol Ibsch, Ibschn, Ybsch, Ybschgeiss (Stumpf, 1548) et Eibsch-Geiss (Wagner, 1680), qui évoquent le mot ibex, désignent la femelle. ...Rappelons quelques appellations anciennes. En latin de moyen âge: ibex, hibix, bix, boch, estagnus, stambechus." (Couturier, 1962, p. 7).
It is difficult to know whether the Latin term ibex derives from Old German or vice versa. The term Ibsch (hence, ibex) might have come from an onomatopoeia of the alarm whistle of the female wild goat. Early settlers in the Alps might have used this term, and it was adopted by Latin Romans. New studies on the etymology of the term ibex might resolve that question.
In summary, 1) in the last 2,000 years multiple terms have been used to designate goats in Europe. Many synonymous terms have been used to designate the genus; e.g. Caper (Jonston, 1650), Tragus (Klein, 1751), Hircus (Charleton, 1677), Ibex (Pallas, 1776; Gervais, 1854). Finally, the Latin name Capra was adopted as the genus of all goats, wild or domestic (Linnaeus, 1758); 2) a few classical natural history texts (Aristotle, Pliny, Isidore of Seville, Gessner, Ray) had great influence on later texts until the 18th C. Some authors, almost up until the present day replicated the legends, with their hits and misses.
Erc might have derived from the Latin term hircus or from the Occitan language. Old Occitan coexisted with Latin between the 1st and the 3rd C. (Nuñez, 2003).  affirmed that, in the Pyrenees, the wild goat was called yerp, and Rohlfs (1970( in Dendaletche, 1971) asserted that the Pyrenean name for the Pyrenean wild goat was erc, which derives from Gascon, a variant of Occitan. According to Nuñez (2003), the Proto-Basque language is closely related to Old Occitan. In the modern Basque language, the male goat is called aker.
Bucardo is the widely used current common name for the Pyrenean wild goat in the Central and Western Spanish Pyrenees (Vidaller, 2016). It derives from the root buck (male goat) and the suffix -ardo, a disparaging augmentative related to their condition of wild (or non-domestic) animal and their big size (Kuhn, 2008).
In the French Pyrenees, the name bouquetin des Pyrénées (Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier, 1824-1842) was used. In Livre de la Chasse, the Count of Bearn (Phoebus, 1387) translated what might be the first description of the bucardo. He called it 'bouc sauvage' (wild male goat) and stated that it is "as big as a red deer and its horns as thick as a man's leg". Apparently, in the Middle Ages, they were so highly abundant in the Pyrenees that 'their hunt had no merit' (Labarère, 1985). The excellent drawings in that manuscript are probably the first representations of the Pyrenean wild goat in various hunting scenes, which show the lyre horns of the Pyrenean morphotype ( fig. 1). In the earliest scientific descriptions of the species, Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier (1824-1842) and Schinz (1838) quoted extensively from Livre de la Chasse.
In conclusion, the local common names of the Pyrenean wild goat (the nominate subspecies of C. pyrenaica) were derivations of 'goat' or 'wild goat', and none included the name ibex.

Classical and early modern texts
In his Naturalis Historia (77 AD), Pliny the Elder was the first to describe, or at least disseminate, the term ibex to refer to the wild goats that lived in the Alps. From the details in his work De la Huerta, 1624;Brotier, 1779), it is clear that he refers to the wild goats in the 7th book only, and the meaning of the terms used are imprecise, probably leading to confusion throughout history. The paragraph in chapter 88 (this chapter number differs among translators) of the 7th book in the Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff edition, reads as follows: " "There is no kind of animal, however, that is divided into a greater number of varieties than the goat. There are the capraea, the rupicapra or rock-goat, and the ibex, an animal of wonderful swiftness, although its head is loaded with immense horns, which bear a strong resemblance to the sheath of a sword. ... There are the oryges also, which are said to be the only animals that have the hair the contrary way, the points being turned towards the head. There are the dama also, the pygargus, and the strepsiceros, besides many others, which strongly resemble them. The first mentioned of these animals, however, dwell in the Alps; all the others are sent to us from the parts beyond sea." Their 18 th note states: "It is not easy to determine what animals Pliny intended to designate. Cuvier employs the terms chevreuils, chamois, and bouquetins as the corresponding words in the French. In English we have no names to express these varieties; we may, however, regard them generally, as different species of wild goats" .
In summary, Pliny used the terms caprae, rupicaprae, and ibices for the 'close' wild goats (particularly, those in the Alps), and oryges, dammae, pygargi, and strepsicerotes for the wild goats from beyond the sea (likely from Africa and the Middle East). These terms have been ascribed to various species depending on the translator (appendix 4).
When referring to synonyms of the term ibex in various languages, he stated that Germans call it Steinbock and Transalpine Gallics call it bouc estain (Gessner, 1602, p. 304), which match the current common names for C. ibex, of Germanic origin. Swiss highlanders call female ibex ybschen or ybschgeiss ('whose name I do not doubt comes from Latin', Gessner, 1551, p. 331). In the description of the animal, Gessner stated that they are abundant in the Alp peaks and that males have heavy horns that are curved backwards (scimitar type), harsh, and knotted: 'Magni ponderis cornua ei reclinantur ad dorsum, aspera & nodosa' (Gessner, 1602, p. 305). The knots in the horns are distinct in the drawings in the book, which are probably among the first drawings of C. ibex ( fig. 2).
That same morphological description, more or less verbatim, was repeated by Ray (1693) and by Linnaeus (1756Linnaeus ( , 1758 in what is considered the official description of the species: "Capra cornibus nodosis in dorsum reclinatis. le Bouc-étain. Ibex. Raj. quadr. 79". Linnaeus was influenced by or copied the description of C. ibex from Ray (appendix 4) and used the French common name Bouc-etain (Linnaeus, 1756), and Ray (1693) followed Pliny, who is quoted in the description. The description was repeated in other Latin texts of the 18th C. (Klein, 1751;Erxleben, 1777;Asso, 1784).

The earliest English texts that mention wild goats
From the 16th C. until the mid-19th C., few zoology books were written in English. Most were written in French or German, as Cuvier et al. (1827Cuvier et al. ( -1835 indicated in the foreword of The Animal Kingdom. The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents (Topsell, 1658) was, perhaps, one of the first Modern Zoology books written in Old English. Topsell used the term ibex to designate Alpine wilde goats, possibly, because of the influence of Isidore of Seville, from whom he extracted the origin of the term ibex, which associates it with the Nile ibis.
Another of the early English texts mentioning C. ibex is the Catalogue of the Museum Leveriani by George Shaw (1791), in which Linnaean nomenclature is already used. This bilingual Latin-English edition includes a brief description of Capra ibex from Linnaeus (1758) (Capra cornibus supra nodosis in dorsum reclinatis), which is translated as "The Ibex. Dark-brown Goat, with large knotted horns reclining backwards". Shaw (1791) refers to Ibex and steinbock equivalently as the common name in English. Both terms are used synonymously in The Animal Kingdom by Cuvier et al. (1827Cuvier et al. ( -1835 and in Gray (1850Gray ( -1852. In summary, in Old English, the word ibex was not used to designate the female or the male goat; rather, geit and buck were used, respectively. The term ibex came later through the Latin influence by Linnaeus (1758), being copied from Ray (1693), who was influenced by Pliny (77 AD). Until the 19th C., ibex, Steinbock, and bouc-etain were used interchangeably as the common name for the Alpine ibex (C. ibex) in English. In the earliest descriptions and use in English of the term ibex, there is no indication that suggests it included Iberian wild goat. Therefore, none of the interpretations based on the texts of Pliny justify the use of ibex as the common name for the Iberian wild goat.
History of the common name of Capra pyrenaica ('cabra montés')

Pre-Linnaean texts
Isidore of Seville was the first to apply the term ibex to Iberian wild goats, connecting its etymology to Nile's bird ibis (Barney et al., 2006, p. 248). Isidore of Seville (an ecclesiastical scholar) may not have had direct knowledge of Iberian wild goats and was limited to copying classical texts for its description, adding strange interpretations the origin of the term ibex.
Based on the Hispanic origin of Isidore of Seville, on the supposed Latin-Iberian origin of the term, and on the renowned Diccionario etimológico de la lengua hispánica by Coromines and Pascual (1984),  justified the use of the term ibex as a common name for the Iberian wild goat. There are several reasons why that was unjustified: (a) Isidore of Seville mentions wild goats and ibex, but he does  not refer to Iberian species specifically; rather, he refers to wild goats in general. Furthermore, Gessner (1602, p. 304) felt that Isidore of Seville confused both terms ('Isidorus dorcades, capreas & ibices imperitissime confundit'). (b) Isidore of Seville gathered most of his information from Pliny the Elder (Barney et al., 2006, p. 14), who referred to ibex as the wild goat that lives in the Alps (see above). (c) In their book, Coromines and Pascual (1984, p. 553) confuse the current species of Southern chamois (Rupicapra pyrenaica) and wild goat (Capra p. hispanica). They created a hybrid Latin name Rupicapra hispanica, and state that ibex only occurs in Spain and not in the Alps. This is a significant error as Pliny (77 AD), Gessner (1602), Klein (1751), and Linnaeus (1758) (among others) make it clear that the ibex is restricted to the Alps. Consequently, given the limited taxonomic and biological background of Coromines and Pascual, their argument should be considered invalid. Contrary to what  maintain, the book by Isidore of Seville is not a reliable source of information about the wild goats living in Iberia at that time.
The first texts written in medieval Spanish that referred to the Iberian fauna did not call C. pyrenaica ibex; rather, they were referred to as cabra montés (wild goat) in general or for females, and cabrón (hegoat). Most of the authors were hunters and knew wild goat very well, having observed them. For instance, in Libro de la Caza (1325), Don Juan Manuel noted that wild goats were present in the County of Villena in the Kingdom of Murcia (Gutiérrez de la Vega et al., 1879). In the famous Libro de la Montería by King Alfonso XI (Argote de Molina, 1582), the wild goat is not mentioned, specifically, but several toponyms associated with wild bock are mentioned (Valverde, 2010), confirming the predominance given to the male to name the species in Classical and Modern texts (Gessner, 1551;appendix 3). In all the old treaties subsequently published in Spanish or Portuguese, the reference is to cabras monteses for females or for the species, and cabrones or macho montés for the male (Barahona de Soto, 1575; Martínez de Espinar, 1644; Calvo Pinto, 1754; Barboza du Bocage, 1857). Some texts reference cabras silvestres from the Canary Islands, which were used to supply vessels with fresh meat (Argote de Molina, 1582). Clearly, those were feral goats, Capra hircus, as there were no goats other than domestic ones in the Canary Islands. In summary, in the Iberian peninsula the term ibex was never used in hunting, wildlife, geographical dictionaries, or legal texts as a common name for Iberian wild goats (appendix 3).
Among the pre-Linnaean Natural History texts from the early Modern period, the first to show the Iberian wild goat was Jonston (1650), who called it Caper hispanicus ( fig. 3). Probably, it is the first or one of the first images of the species after the bouquetin drawings in Le livre de la Chasse (Phoebus, 1387). Subsequently, the Latin name Caper Hispanicus was used by Charleton (1677) in his Historia Naturalis and he gave it the name 'Spanish wild goat'. The 'ibex', which was illustrated by a drawing copied from Gessner (1551), occurs in the Alps.
Post-Linnaean texts before the first scientific description of C. pyrenaica in 1838 Erxleben (1777) described five species in the genus Capra: hircus, ibex, mambrina, depressa, and reversa. In the hircus group he included αἶγας (aigas) and τράγος (tragos) from Aristotle, Capra from Pliny, several domestic goats described by various authors, and C. aegagrus, which was the first taxonomic description of the species recognized today. In that group, Erxleben included Caper Hispanicus based on Jonston (1650). These taxa were differentiated from the ibex group (Alpine Ibex Capra ibex), for which he used the 1758 Linnaeus definition (Capra cornibus nodosis in dorsum recIinatis) and quoted Pliny, specifically.
Asso (1784) is one of the few in the 18th C. who remarked upon the fauna of the Aragon region in Spain. He differentiated three kinds of goats that occurred in the Pyrenees: Capra Hircus (domestic), Capra Rupicapra (chamois) and Capra Ibex, (living in Plan, Gistau Valley), and certainly was referring to the Pyrenean wild goat. He used that name because he followed Linnaeus faithfully and, at that time, C. pyrenaica had not been described scientifically. In the second half of the 18th C. and the early 19th C., various authors used the term C. ibex for wild goats in general (Klein, 1751;Pennant, 1793). Cuvier et al. (1827Cuvier et al. ( -1835 used the common name ibex and the scientific name Capra Ibex for all the European wild goats. He presumed that they still existed in Candia (Crete), Greece, and the Carpathians. He stated that Iberian wild goats exist in the Asturias Mountains and in the Pyrenees 'where they are almost extinct'.
In summary, most of the pre-and post-Linnaean texts that describe the Iberian fauna did not refer to the Iberian wild goat as an ibex, but as 'cabra montés' (wild goat). A few authors who do refer to it as ibex (Isidore of Seville, Asso, Cuvier G.) follow the inertia of naming all European wild goats as ibex, misinterpreting Pliny the Elder who used this term only for the wild goats from the Alps. The scientific description of C. pyrenaica was not achieved by Schinz until 1838.  (1650), one of the first representations of Iberian wild goat after the drawings in Livre de la Chasse (Phoebus, 1387). The drawing illustrates the typical lyreshaped horns of the Pyrenean morphotype. www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/137912#page/135/mode/1up, public domain (holding institution: Smithsonian Libraries, sponsored by: Biodiversity Heritage Library).

Taxonomically, few have considered Capra pyrenaica an ibex
Scientific descriptions of the species in the 19th C.
In one of the first descriptions of C. pyrenaica, Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier (1824-1842) included extensively long passages from Gaston Phoebus's (1387) book.
In the text, they called it Bouquetin des Pyrenées, but in the index it is referred to as C. ibex. They also reproduced a drawing of a young male in captivity in La Ménagerie (a private zoo in Paris) that is unrepresentative of the species (Sánchez Hernández, 2010, p. 41). The drawing was reproduced by Schinz (1838) in the first taxonomic description of C. pyrenaica. In the title and through the text he used Pyrenäenbock and Steinbock der Pyrenäen as the common name to differentiate it from the Alpensteinbock. Schinz's description of the new species was based on skins and drawings given to him by his colleague Carl F. Bruch (Sánchez Hernández, 2010). Ten years later, Schimper (1848) described a new species of Capra for Iberia, C. hispanica, based on specimens collected on an expedition to the Sierra Nevada (Spain). For the common names, he used the ones used locally, cabra montés (wild goat) or Montesa (wild she-goat).
The morphotype of C. pyrenaica differs from that of the other wild goats, at least from the Alpine ibex ( fig. 4). Therefore, in one of the first catalogues of the British Museum, Gray (1850-1852) separated C. pyrenaica and the tur C. caucasica from the other Capra and assigned them the generic name Aegoceros. To Ae. pyrenaica he assigned the common name Pyrenean tur.
In his interesting treatise of mammals from Galicia, López Seoane (1861) noted the presence of C. pyrenaica, which was present in the NW Spanish sierras at that time, where it was called craba brava or craba fera, a vernacular term for wild goat (appendix 3). Graells (1897), following Gervais (1854), assigned the Iberian goats to the genus Ibex (Ibex pyrenaicus). He used the term Ibex as a synonym of Capra. For example, he called the Alpine ibex Ibex alpinus and the recently described (Schimper, 1848) wild goat of southern Iberia Ibex hispanicus. In some cases, the name Ibex had been used as a generic name instead of Capra; e.g., Frisch 1775 (cited in Parrini et al., 2009), Pallas (1776), Pennant (1793), Gervais (1854). For the common name, Graells (1897) used cabra montés.
Lydekker (1898) named C. pyrenaica the Spanish tur (probably following Gray) and assigned it an intermediate morphotype between the Caucasian tur and the 'true ibex' although more similar to the former. He also called it the Spanish wild goat (p. 255), but added "but it may best be called a tur rather than an ibex".
Classification and common names of C. pyrenaica in the 20th C.
In an influential paper,  defined the currently accepted subspecies of C. pyrenaica (Shackleton, 1997;Herrero et al., 2020). He used the common name Spanish ibex to refer to the species.
The work of  had a significant impact by substantially changing the taxonomy of the Iberian wild goats and contributed to the spreading of the inappropriate term Spanish ibex in the 20th C. Specifically,  combined into a single species (C. pyrenaica) the two species initially described by Schinz (1838), C. pyrenaica, and Schimper (1848), C. hispanica, designated each as a subspecies. He also described two new subspecies (lusitanica and victoriae). Camerano (1917) and others (Forsyth Major, 1879; Graells, 1897) advocated maintaining the two original species.
Probably,  use of the term Spanish ibex was influenced by his relationship with English-speaking scientists (Casado, 2012) and by contemporary texts of English explorers (Buxton, 1892;Chapman andBuck, 1893, 1910) that he used in part to describe the species' distribution in Iberia. These English hunters who explored Iberia at the end of the 19th C. and earlier 20th C probably did not know the description of Iberian wild goats by Schinz and Schimper, whom they do not quote in their works, and adopted the generic term 'ibex' used for the European wild goats in general (see previous sections). In his monography on Iberian mammals, Cabrera (1914) provided a list of vernacular names used for the species in the Iberian peninsula. Almost all of them are variations of wild goat (cabra montés, cabra salvatge, craba brava, cabra montez, bucardo). In addition, he noted that in Old Spanish, it was named ibis or íbice, probably because of the influence of Las Etimologías by Isidore of Seville, which does not parallel the hunting or popular texts of the Medieval Period (appendix 3).
More recently, Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951) differentiated C. pyrenaica and C. caucasica (which includes C. cylindricornis) from the ibexes, and recognized five species for Capra: C. hircus (domestic goats and bezoars), C. ibex (ibexes sensu lato, see below), C. caucasica (Caucasian tur), C. falconeri (markhor), and C. pyrenaica (called Spanish ibex but included in a different subgenus Turocapra). In the renowned text Mammals of the Soviet Union,  proposed a taxonomy for the genus Capra that included eight species, which is similar to the nine accepted currently .  grouped C. hircus with C. aegagrus in one species. In their review, they referred to C. pyrenaica as Pyrenean goat, not Spanish ibex (appendix 1).
The phylogeography and systematic classification of Iberian wild goats (Capra pyrenaica) is unclear ) although there are several hypotheses for their origin. An overview of these is presented in appendix 5.
In summary, Capra pyrenaica has been given a variety of common names (Caper Hispanicus, Spanish tur, Spanish wild goat). By a fortuitous occurrence, the term Spanish ibex has become common in scientific texts, but this does not mean that it is the most accurate or appropriate. The use of the term Spanish ibex began to appear in some English-language texts written in the 19th C. (Cuvier et al., 1827(Cuvier et al., -1835Busk, 1877) and it spread rapidly in the early 20th C. as English emerged as the predominant language of science. Several popular books about hunting stories by English hunters and explorers in Spain, such as Buxton (1892) and Chapman andBuck (1893, 1910), perpetuated the term Spanish ibex. This was aided by the influential paper by . Nevertheless, there was still no reason to use the name ibex in English to describe European wild goats other than Alpine ibex.

Horn morphology and molecular genetics
As seen in previous sections, the taxonomy of the Capra genus has been controversial and is not yet fully resolved today appendix 1). Until the incorporation of molecular techniques, it was mainly based on morphological and biogeographical criteria . One of the most widespread criteria used the shape of the horns of adult males. For example,  established five morphotypes for Capra: the Spanish goat type (C. pyrenaica), the eastern tur (C. cylindricornis), the markhor (C. falconeri), the bezoar-type (C. aegagrus), and the ibex type ( fig. 4; see also appendix 1). The last applies to a particular horn morphotype, in which adult males bear scimitar-shaped horns that have prominent knobs or ridges on their anterior surfaces . This is typical for several Capra species (C. ibex, partially in C. caucasica, C. sibirica, C. nubiana, and C. walie) and some authors considered they might be subspecies of C. ibex . Adult males of the C. pyrenaica morphotype (also called the lyreshaped morphotype) present double-curved and, normally, smooth horns (Schinz, 1838;. The ibex and C. pyrenaica morphotypes differ so much that De Beaux (1949) proposed a new subgenus, Turocapra, only for the Iberian wild goat, although this has not been accepted and used in scientific publications.
Capra sibirica (of the ibex morphotype) is genetically quite distant from C. ibex (Alpine ibex) Joshi et al., 2020). Several molecular analyses show C. nubiana (ibex morphotype) to be genetically more distant from C. ibex than from other Capra species of different morphotypes . Conversely, markhor (C. falconeri) is relatively genetically close to C. aegagrus ) despite having radically different horn morphotypes ( fig. 4 and appendix 1). C. caucasica and C. cylindricornis belong to two different horn morphotypes although some authors point out a close genetic relationship between the two . Others  have also indicated this dissimilarity and consider that the ibex morphotype could be a plesiomorphic character for the Capra genus. These discrepancies are not particularly unusual since the genes that regulate the shape and size of the horns are evolutionarily easy to modify , as livestock risers know. However, neither external morphological features nor genetic distances based on particular molecular characters are suitable alone for a reliable diagnosis of taxonomic status. To be biologically meaningful, classifications must involve integration of genetic, morphological, physiological and behavioural data (Giacometti et al., 1997).
Most molecular studies have shown a close genetic relationship between C. pyrenaica and C. ibex (Manceaux et al., 1999;, even if horn morphotypes are completely different ( fig. 4). Genetic closeness does not justify the adoption of a common name (Spanish ibex) which additionally is based on a morphotype that does not match Capra pyrenaica. The scientific nomenclature follows a rigorous regulation guided by phylogenetic relationships, which is not the case of common names. Common names are usually recognizable, easy to pronounce and stable over time, and they are intended to link the people of the territory with its species (Bowen-Jones and Entwistle, 2002).
The conservation value of common names and the use of the name 'wild goat' Although scientists agreed to name the species of organisms based on the Linnaeus (1758) binomial system, the common names given to taxa are important to promote sound communication in fields such as science, conservation and legislation. Often, common names of species are linked to vernacular names that local people attribute to the plants and animals they know, and these become part of their cultural heritage. It is important to take this into account when using common names of species in monographs, catalogues, or legal documents, because the inhabitants of affected areas will be more committed to the conservation of these species (Duckworth and Pine, 2003;Stevens et al., 2014).
English common names are important in the public's perception of animals and are therefore essential for flagship species (Bowen-Jones and Entwistle, 2002). Capra pyrenaica is a outstanding endemic species of the Iberian peninsula, and emblematic for many nature enthusiasts, conservationists, and hunters. Some taxonomists  have used the term wild goat preferably or exclusively for the attributed ancestor of domestic goats (Capra aegagrus or bezoar). Although the term aegagrus originated from the Greek aiga agrios ('wild goat'), this term is not exclusive for C. aegagrus. As has been shown throughout the preceding text, the term 'wild goat' has been used (in different forms and languages) for the last 20 centuries for several Capra taxa including C. pyrenaica.
The term wild goat has arisen because of the need to differentiate the domestic and wild forms of the same species (C. aegagrus). Subsequently, the common name wild goat was reserved exclusively for Capra aegagrus. However, originally, for Pliny and his followers, wild goat included other wild goats; e.g., the caprea, rupicapra, and ibeces from Pliny the Elder (77 AD), and the Capra sylvestris of Gessner (1551). To avoid mistakes, C. aegagrus is frequently called bezoar or pasang.
Some authors Karaffa et al., 2012) assert that from the point of view of conservation, it is preferable not to use common names with pejorative connotations like wild or killer, avoiding the term wild goat. However, in our opinion, nowadays the term 'wild' can have positive connotations for a growing sector of the population that sympathizes with nature and wilderness. Consider for example, the now classic ideas of 'wildness' and 'wilderness' from Henry D. Thoreau and his followers ('In wildness is the preservation of the world'; Thoreau, 1854) or the more recent of 'rewilding' (the return of habitats to their natural state). A separate question is the term 'killer', improperly applied for example to Orcinus orca ('killer whale'), which is neither a whale and is certainly not a murderer. The argument of  that the use of wild goat might reduce the conservation value of Capra pyrenaica because the general population might confuse them with 'stray or feral goats' is unrealistic. Since centuries ago in Iberia, people know perfectly well that cabra montés or cabra brava is a wild animal and not a domestic goat that has returned to a wild state. Regarding the latter, in Spanish, the term cabra asilvestrada or cimarrona (feral goat) is used.

Concluding remarks
This review aimed to show that the names used most frequently to designate the wild members of the Capra genus (aegagrus, Steinbock) are related etymologically to the term wild goat, with different forms influenced by the sex of the animal or the language of origin. The use of one term or another by different authors over the last 2,000 years has depended largely on popular use and the original sources that the academics used as the basis for their work.
Probably, the term ibex is of Latin origin, and the etymology provided by Isidore of Seville (c. 556-636), which associates it with Ibis of the Nile, is unlikely. In addition, he stated that ibices were exclusive of Iberia, which is incorrect. Pliny the Elder (77 AD), in his Historiae Naturalis, was the first to use the term ibex in Latin, which referred to the wild goats in the Alps. Other pre-Linnaean authors adopted the term. Gessner (1551), asserted the Alpine origin of ibices, and included in its description one of the main morphological features, viz., scimitar-shaped horns that have knots, and are curved backwards. That diagnostic feature was adopted by Ray (1693) and by Linnaeus (1758) in what became the officially accepted definition for the species C. ibex ('capra cornibus nodosis in dorsum reclinatis').
The use of Latin as the erudite and scientific language in Europe until the 18th C. greatly influenced those who followed the early Roman authors, especially Pliny the Elder. For instance, the term ibex appeared in some ancient academic texts such as that of Isidore of Seville (Lindsay, 1911). Nevertheless, in medieval books about law, hunting, or Natural History, the common names of Capra in their respective languages or their derivatives began to be used. For example, cabra montes in Libro de la Caza by Juan Manuel (Gutiérrez de la Vega et al., 1879), bouquetin in Le Livre de la Chasse by Gaston Phoebus (1387), and Steinbock and Ibsch in the medieval Germanic treatises .
The use of the term ibex continued in post-Linnaean English-language texts, and some included all the known wild goats (Pennant, 1793;Cuvier, 1798;Gervais, 1854;. Even a seminal Spanish paper  followed that nomenclature for C. pyrenaica and called it Spanish ibex. Subsequently, the term has been used extensively, although without a rational basis to do so, given that the first Natural History texts written in English used interchangeably ibex, Steinbock or bouc-etain as the common name for C. ibex. In the 19th and 20th C. from the first description of the species in 1838 by Schinz (Pyrenäenbock) to the prestigious catalogs such as Lydekker (1898) and , few considered C. pyrenaica as an ibex, taxonomically. Several experts have defended the morphological distinction between Iberian wild goat and the ibexes (Gray, 1850(Gray, -1852De Beaux, 1949;. However, various mtDNA studies have identified a close genetic relationship between C. pyrenaica and C. ibex (e.g., Manceaux et al., 1999; and some assert the common name for C. pyrenaica should therefore be 'Iberian ibex'. Nevertheless, genetic proximity does not necessarily mirror morphological similarity Bar-Gal et al., 2002). In addition to morphology, common names can reflect any other useful feature for locals to easily recognize a particular species (Duckworth and Pine, 2003). Common names do not have to follow the rules of scientific nomenclature based on phylogeny.
If we accept that the common name of an animal is the popular name used by the general population, it should be noted no one in Portugal and Spain calls C. pyrenaica an ibex. There, they are referred to as cabra montés, cabra salvatge or cabra brava (among other similar vernacular names), which translate to wild goat. Experts and hunters use the same names, and when they speak about ibex they are referring to the Alpine ibex or to the ibex of other areas. We suggest that 'Iberian wild goat', a common name that has already been used in several languages for centuries and in scientific texts (see appendices 2 and 3), is the most appropriate common name for C. pyrenaica and that scientific, legal and popular media use this common name.

Supplementary material
Appendix 1. Different taxonomic schemes for Capra genus, and species currently accepted.
Appendix 3. Common and vernacular names for Capra pyrenaica in the Iberian peninsula in ancient texts.

Apéndice 3. Nombres comunes y vernáculos de Capra pyrenaica en la península ibérica en textos antiguos.
The oldest references to Capra pyrenaica in Romance language texts are masculine: cabrón montés (male goat). For example, in the Aragon Crown, the Vidal Mayor book (the first Aragonese law compilation written in 1247-1252), states 'ercum, es assaber cabrón salvage' [ercum (hircus) is scilicet wild male goat] (Tilander, 1956). In the Teruel and in Albarracín charters, written about 1300, it is called cabrón montés (Gorosch, 1950;Riba, 1915). In the Kingdom of Castile, the Archpriest of Hita (1330-1343) writes about the cabrón montés (Blecua, 1992). The use of that term continues until the end of the 15th C., which was described in a royal hunt in Coca (Segovia province) in the reign of Enrique IV of Castile (Sánchez Parra, 1991). One of the few exceptions is in the General Estoria of Alfonso X (13th C.), in which the species is for the first time referred to using the female term cabra montés (Sánchez-Prieto and Horcajada, 1994). From the 15th C. onwards, use of the female term was widespread, probably because of the influence of the name of the domestic goat. In Spanish, as in other Romance languages, the names of domestic species are feminine because the usefulness of the animal derives from the female; e.g. production of eggs or milk by hens, sheep, goats, or cows.
Despite the gender inconsistency (cabra: female; montés; male) in common names, in the centuries that followed, the syntagma cabra montés, rather than cabra montesa, prevailed. This occurs in scientific, hunting, and literature texts. That name, along with some variants, is found in several dictionaries and vocabularies. For instance, in the Diccionario Eclesiástico by Rodrigo Fernández de Santaella (1499), Caprea is distinguished from Ibex. The former is translated directly as cabra montés, and the latter is described as an animal belonging to the deer or cabra montés lineages; i.e., similar but not equivalent to cabra montés. Similarly, Terreros y Pando (1787) defines íbice (the Spanish term for Ibex) as 'cabra montés del delfinado' (Dauphiné). Nebrija (1495) and Percival (1591) mentioned cabra montesina, and the latter considered the term equivalent to wild goat. Covarrubias (1611) wrote cabra salvaje, montesa, or montesina; however, in the entry for cabrón (he-goat), the wild species is not mentioned. Vittori (1609) and Franciosini (1620) treated the term cabra silvestre or montesina as equivalent to cabra montez.
Classical hunting writers in the Spanish Gold Century (16-17th C.), such as Barahona de Soto (Anonimous, 1890), , and Pedraza Gaitán (Terrón, 1986) used cabra montés, only, and macho montés was used rarely (Calvo Pinto, 1754), even though the latter is used, occasionally, today. In several geographic texts from the 16th and 18th C., the most extended name in Spain was cabra montés. For example, in Relaciones Topográficas by Philip II, a survey of southern peninsular Spain between 1575 and 1579, the common name was cabra montesa in 23 localities in seven provinces (Ortega Rubio, 1918). The same term was used by Gómez de Bedoya (1765) in Fuencaliente (Ciudad Real province), by Ponz (1789) in Arenas de San Pedro (Ávila province) and Las Villuercas (Cáceres Province), and by García de la Leña (1789) in the Sierras de Málaga.
All of those references are from the southern Iberian peninsula, south of the Central Mountain Range. In the Northern Iberia, there is more variety of local names for the wild goat. In the Catalan Pyrenees, in the 18th C., Francisco de Zamora mentioned the name herc or erc and buey silvestre (wild ox) (Maluquer, 1992). In the Aragonese Pyrenees, the variant yerp was used (Graells, 1897). The name herc, obviously related to hircus, was used in the area since the Middle Ages to refer to the species (Tilander, 1956). Buey silvestre is equivalent to bo do seixo (literally rock ox) in Galicia, quoted by López Seoane (1861-1863).
The almost disappearance of Capra pyrenaica in the North Iberian mountain ranges in the 19th C. (i.e. extinction in the Cantabrian Range, drastic reduction in the Pyrenees) led to the disappearance of the local names. Bucardo (big buck) is the only local name that has survived, and cabra montés was the most commonly used name in Spanish-language scientific publications of the period (Machado, 1869;Martínez y Reguera, 1881;Cazurro, 1894;Graells, 1897). In Portugal, Barboza de Bocage (1863) called it Cabra-montez, although Gama (1957) valued equally cabra montês, cabra do Gerez (its last locality in Portugal), and cabra brava.
Ultimately, the designation Ibex in Spain and Portugal was a Latinism, an academic term that has no history of use as a common name in legal, hunting, geographic, or scientific texts. For that reason, it is unsurprising that Isidore of Seville used that term in the Early Middle Ages . He wrote in Latin, knew well classical works, but the term had nothing to do with the vernacular names that the general population used in the Iberian peninsula. Fig. 2s. Schematic representation of the 'double-wave' (A) and 'one-wave hypothesis' (B) for filogeographic evolution of Capra pyrenaica and C. ibex. According to the first, C. pyrenaica originated from a common ancestor of the C. caucasica-cylindricornis complex through the intermediary of the common ancestor C. caucausica praepyrenaica (Crégut-Bonnoure, 1992, 2006. The second hypothesis suggest a common origin between C. pyrenaica and C. ibex , perhaps sharing a common ancestor of the C. camburgensis type. The divergence time differs according to the authors: 720-600 ka or 90-50 ka. Fig. 2s. Representación esquemática de las hipótesis de la doble oleada (A) y de la oleada única (B) para explicar la evolución filogeográfica de Capra pyrenaica y C. ibex. De acuerdo con la primera, C. pyrenaica se originó a partir de un ancestro común del complejo C. caucasica-cylindricornis a través del intermediario del ancestro común C. caucausica praepyrenaica (Crégut-Bonnoure, 1992, 2006. La segunda hipótesis sugiere un origen común entre C. pyrenaica y C. ibex , que tal vez compartan un ancestro común del tipo C. camburgensis. El momento de la divergencia difiere según el autor: 720-600 miles de años o 90-50 miles de años atrás.
A B