What do you call a "bluegill"?

[Big Bad Wulff]

Perch are long and skinny. Atleast the perch I have seen.

[Flicted Mike]

Pretty simple. Brim is a slang term. Bream is a slang term. Stump Knocker, Shell Cracker, Knobby Head, those are all slang terms.

Perch is just wrong but it's what all my southern friends call them.

I call them Bluegill.

A walleye is a member of the perch family, would you call a walleye a perch?

[ohiotuber]

Bluegill or 'gills.
Mike

[Waders]

On a particular pond in Vinemont AL we call them Dixie Plates. Due to the size of the bream. We had two last year that were 14" long and had ears the size of my Thumb. Huge. We also call them "FUN" on a 3 wt.

[garyj147]

Big Bad Wulff,
Because there are so many different local colloquialisms in naming fish (and other critters and plants), biologists and foresters typically use scientific nomenclature to specifically define the creature or plant they are speaking of. In the case of the common named "bluegill", the scientific nomenclature is "Lepomis macrochirus", as you likely already know. If you wish for everyone to specifically know this is the fish you are talking about, the use of the scientific nomenclature will ensure everyone is on the same page. (That is, until the ichthyologists start playing the "lumping and splitting game" with scientific names, which often then confuses the biologists as well as the lay person!)

But then again, the scientific names are not nearly so quaint and colorful as the common local names given to the various species of fish. As an example, the last time I checked there were at least 57 different common names used for crappie in the various parts of North America: crappie, croppie (a term actually voted on by the Kentucky State Legislature many years ago to remedy what was considered a "vulgar" name!), stumpknocker, papermouth, sac-a-lait, speck, etc., etc.

As indicated by other folks who have commented on your thread, "bream" (or brim, as some folks insist) is a collective term for a group of fishes that include the bluegill, redear sunfish, green sunfish, pumpkinseed, redbreast sunfish, longear sunfish, and others of this genre. These fishes are members of the Centrarchidae family of fishes, which is commonly called the "sunfish" family. Interestingly, this family also includes the two species of crappies, black and white (as well as the genetic variation of the black crappie called the "black-nose" crappie), the black basses (which includes the largemouth, smallmouth, spotted, Guadalupe, Suwanee, Coosa and other black basses), the flier ("Cetrarchus macropterus"), the rock bass ("Ambloplites rupestris"), banded, bluespotted, and black banded sunfishes of the eastern coastal plain, and even the Sacramento perch ("Archoplites interruptus") of the Sacramento-San Joaquin basin of California.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. (Most likely, this is WAY more than anyone really wanted to know!) Sure makes for some intersting discussion, doesn't it?

[dudley]

(Most likely, this is WAY more than anyone really wanted to know!)

[Flicted Mike]

Bluegill are Bluegill and Crappie are Crappie. That's not a northern or a southern name, it's just right. The common name for Lepomis macrochirus is Bluegill. But there are other slang terms like shellcracker, stumpknocker, sunnies, knobbyhead, there are dozens. But one slang a Missuori friend called them is just wrong. He called them perch. Perch is a completely different species.

My favorite slang was for largemouth bass in southern Mississipi. They call them "Green Trout"

[idabelangler]

Perch and bream are the most common name for them in Oklahoma

[Eight Thumbs]

Brim has been mentioned a couple of times but that's my preferred term for one of the greatest game fish anywhere. 8T

[Joe Billingsley]

Bream.
Joe