Are ミツバチ and イルカ more frequently written in katakana?


I was looking through a list of words that normally are written in kana,
instead of their kanji. Two caught my attention because the list has them
written in katakana, instead of hiragana. But, as neither are 外来語, writing
them in katakana seems strange.

**When given no context, is it true that both "honey bee" and "dolphin" are
written in katakana (instead of hiragana)?**

(Note: I do not care about any theory as to "why" they are exceptions. Simply,
when _there is no context_ and they are just words in a list, should both be
written in katakana?)

Here is the full list of animals written in kana, instead of kanji:

> あかんぼう baby, infant  
>  **イルカ dolphin**  
>  うさぎ a rabbit  
>  かたつむり snail  
>  きつね a fox  
>  くらげ a jellyfish  
>  とら tiger  
>  とんぼ dragon fly  
>  ばら rose  
>  **ミツバチ honey bee**  
>  やまあらし porcupine  
>  やもめ a widow  
>  りす a squirrel




> When given no context, is it true that both "honey bee" and "dolphin" are
> written in katakana (instead of hiragana)?

Yes, but using hiragana is perfectly acceptable.

Names of species is one area where katakana is very often used, but there seem
to be no rule to tell which is more widely used to write a specific name. In
the examples you mentioned above, ウサギ，カタツムリ， etc. are equally common, and I
can't really say which (katakana vs. hiragana) is more common. I feel イルカ is
more often seen than いるか, but I wouldn't find it odd if I see いるか without
context. (There are contexts where one is probably preferred over the other,
but I think this is out of topic for this question).

The common custom to write names of species (plants, animals, insects..) seems
to have derived from the convention of academic fields.

Several informations that might interest you:

  * Japanese wikipedia [encourages to use katakana in titles of articles of species](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%97%E3%83%AD%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A7%E3%82%AF%E3%83%88:%E7%94%9F%E7%89%A9#.E9.A0.85.E7.9B.AE.E5.90.8D).
  * [現代日本語書き言葉における非外来語のカタカナ表記事情 (pdf)](https://www.ninjal.ac.jp/event/specialists/project-meeting/files/JCLWorkshop_no4_papers/JCLWorkshop_No4_35.pdf) (Frequency of Katakana Representation for Japanese Non-loan Words as Observed in the BCCWJ Corpus), found under the [National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics](https://www.ninjal.ac.jp/event/specialists/project-meeting/m-2013/jclws04/) , deals with similar question. While neither みつばち nor イルカ is observed in the article, it mentions the plant/animal names as a more-likely-to-be-written-in-katakana words.
  * [The Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese](http://pj.ninjal.ac.jp/corpus_center/bccwj/en/) may be good for individual research.




> When given no context, is it true that both "honey bee" and "dolphin" are
> written in katakana (instead of hiragana)?

Yes, but using hiragana is perfectly acceptable.

Names of species is one area where katakana is very often used, but there seem
to be no rule to tell which is more widely used to write a specific name. In
the examples you mentioned above, ウサギ，カタツムリ， etc. are equally common, and I
can't really say which (katakana vs. hiragana) is more common. I feel イルカ is
more often seen than いるか, but I wouldn't find it odd if I see いるか without
context. (There are contexts where one is probably preferred over the other,
but I think this is out of topic for this question).

The common custom to write names of species (plants, animals, insects..) seems
to have derived from the convention of academic fields.

Several informations that might interest you:

  * Japanese wikipedia [encourages to use katakana in titles of articles of species](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%97%E3%83%AD%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A7%E3%82%AF%E3%83%88:%E7%94%9F%E7%89%A9#.E9.A0.85.E7.9B.AE.E5.90.8D).
  * [現代日本語書き言葉における非外来語のカタカナ表記事情 (pdf)](https://www.ninjal.ac.jp/event/specialists/project-meeting/files/JCLWorkshop_no4_papers/JCLWorkshop_No4_35.pdf) (Frequency of Katakana Representation for Japanese Non-loan Words as Observed in the BCCWJ Corpus), found under the [National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics](https://www.ninjal.ac.jp/event/specialists/project-meeting/m-2013/jclws04/) , deals with similar question. While neither みつばち nor イルカ is observed in the article, it mentions the plant/animal names as a more-likely-to-be-written-in-katakana words.
  * [The Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese](http://pj.ninjal.ac.jp/corpus_center/bccwj/en/) may be good for individual research.

