If anyone understands that names matter, it’s the Latter-day Saints. The Church has long been focused on names, wavering on whether “Mormon” should be shed in favor of their longer official title (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Naming, renaming, and the desire to belong are not just theological debates — they are identity projects, bound with history, recognition and legitimacy.
Long before the common name “Mormon” crickets, the insect had many names. In Nuuchu/Nuu-ciu, Southern Paiute, Shoshone and Goshute languages, these crickets were at times called mī-soods/maison,tsututtsi, tsutumpittseh, and innumerable unheard names that carry relationships and histories far deeper than the settler term “Mormon.”
I study these insects, and I think we should give them a better common name. When we do, let’s draw on Indigenous communities, the Saints, the farmers, the ranchers, and even people abroad with parallel experiences. Let’s save these endemic Western US insects from the language of “smelly” from the New York Times and the “pest” language from the USDA. Entomologists could be involved too, because Mormon crickets are technically katydids (Anabrus simplex to be “scientific.”)
Names aren’t neutral. Renaming crickets isn’t just about “politeness” or accuracy. It’s about shifting the frame through which we see our human and more-than-human neighbors. The Latter-day Saints are onto something with their attention to naming. Language is slow-motion policy: it encodes who belongs, who’s to blame, and what futures are possible.
“Mormon crickets” have carried their nickname for two centuries, long before “Mormon” was pop-culture fodder for reality TV or Broadway. The name dates back to pioneer precarity and the “Miracle of the Gulls,” when seagulls gorged on swarming insects that threatened early settlers’ crops. This summer I weighed one at a hefty 8 grams. Along roadsides on the Uintah and Ouray and Duck Valley Reservations, I spoke with Shoshone Paiute land stewards, Ute leaders, ranchers, teachers, entomologists, missionaries, truckers, and bartenders — anyone with a cricket story. What science and society know about the crickets hasn’t shifted much since 1848. The migrations still feel just as mystical.
Bellyaching about the crickets is a fast-track to friendship with anyone living along the path of this million-insect parade. It’s sort of like complaining about the heat or summer road construction out West, everyone feels it. Like road work and hot summers, the migrating crickets are inevitable and have the possibility of moving from daily pestilence to existential horror.
While folk stories paint a wary picture, I am quite grateful that the most sinister thing Mormon crickets did to me was burp stinky brown liquid on my shirt. I followed swarms across Utah and Nevada, watching highways turn slick with crushed bodies and hearing ranchers compare the crickets to wildfires. I’m an entomologist who has seen a lot of bugs, but nothing matches the mesmerizing spectacle of the Mormon cricket march. I want to know what moves them.
Mormon crickets have marched across the West since before the Rockies rose. Their annual swarms feed fish, birds, and coyotes — and they may act as indicators of ecological stress. Nowadays, from the Uintah Basin to the Snake River Plain, people notice that cricket swarms often appear in stressed landscapes, drought-hit pastures, overgrazed allotments, and fragmented sagebrush. But are they the cause or the effect? Most say neither, but most, myself included, are uninitiated to the many ways they’re entangled in the West’s changing ecological and cultural webs.
Rep. Doug Owens—a Democrat, LDS churchgoer, and Yale Law alum—sparked controversy in the 2025 Utah Legislature with H.B.348 “Insect Terminology Amendments.” His bill sought to petition the Entomological Society of America to rename, arguing that the term disrespects LDS policy, disregards Indigenous names, and undermines the very purpose of common names: to make communication easier between scientists and the public. The bill failed, but it raised sharper questions than the partisan squabbling allowed: Who gets to rename? Whose histories get restored? What should a name communicate, scientifically, socially, spiritually?
Renaming could also connect the West to other places where katydid swarms shape life. In southern Africa, for instance, Acanthoplus discoidalis erupts in the millions, defending itself by squirting toxic blood, a reminder that the spectacle and the stigma of insect migrations is not unique.
If renaming comes, it should start with those who have lived longest with these beings. Names should be treated as living, relational, and plural. This fall, I’ll take that case to the Entomological Society of America, and I want to hear from anyone willing to talk crickets. For all the squabbling the bill inspired, I think Owens was onto something more important than our system usually admits — that names shape who belongs, whose histories endure, and what futures we allow.
Li Murphy is an Colorado-born, Idaho-raised entomologist, writer and National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at Yale School of the Environment. She has spent the summer of 2025 tracking Mormon cricket swarms across Nevada, Idaho and Utah — including on the Uintah and Ouray as well as Duck Valley Reservations — with drones, insect-mounted cameras and a focus on connecting ecological research with the memories of multigenerational land stewards and all eyes on the future of the West.
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