As others have mentioned there is the movement to change the common names of North American bird species that are named after people (the American Ornithological Society has authority to change standardized common names but not scientific names) that has been growing over the past few years and got popular this past summer. I don’t really care either way, although I think it would cause some significant division in the birding community that maybe isn’t worth it for the minimal practical improvements it will cause. Ultimately they’re common names so people can use whatever they want. My biggest question for that idea is if there is much difference between Virginia’s Warbler (named after the wife of the army surgeon who discovered it) and Virginia Rail (I assume named after the state, which is named after Queen Elizabeth I) or other location-based names named after people.
I am very much of the opinion that organisms should be named descriptively in some manner, or based on the local indigenous name, not after people.
What constitutes descriptively varies a bit, but for me it should either be something that tells you something about the organism’s physical characteristics or its location. The location could be the region, or the habitat.
I don’t much like naming organisms after people, and there is a lot of repetition in the naming when things are named after people as well.
For me this hold true for both scientific and common names.
So, I’m fine with the practice of naming organisms after people. For those who are staunchly against it, I’d challenge you to first find some simple, descriptive names that haven’t been used in a large genus like Euphorbia. There are a few, but they are often rare and hard to find (there are over 5.5 thousand published names for Euphorbia). Then read any of the monographs of the greatest contributors to our understanding of the genus you chose. Try to picture how much time went into it and how much further behind we would be without that contribution. I’m really glad that there is a Euphorbia geyeri var. wheeleriana and a E. boissieriana. Without Wheeler or Boissier, we would be two generations or more (interested taxonomists and the societal conditions for them to be productive in certain groups don’t always pop up every generation) behind where we are now. Furthermore, I feel like the person who put in the work to learn that something is different is within their rights to name it what they want. If Wheeler wanted to honor a person named Hoover for his contributions or help to Wheeler personally, then I generally have no problem with that. I might prefer something different, but I’m far more annoyed by proposed names that are overly long.
Regarding the practice itself, I’d rather have a short epithet named after a person, than a 4-5 syllable epithet attempt to describe the place or feature (e.g., I think E. fendleri is better than E. cozumelensis or E. mesembryanthemifolia). The problem with the question posed is that it kind of assumes that a descriptive name will be easier to learn than a name of a person. However, E. mesembryanthemifolia, in particular, is probably my least favorite and hardest to learn (or one of them) epithets in Euphorbia, and it is a “descriptive” name. Meanwhile, E. fendleri is a short and easy to learn name, especially since so many Southwestern US plants are named after Fendleri.
Unless there is a clear difference in the size of the epithet, I personally prefer descriptive names too and usually follow this order when coming up with names: descriptive, location, significant contributor to the field, significant collector of the species (e.g., epithets fendleri and warnockii), and other. We can try to encourage this in taxonomy students but limiting to only descriptive or location isn’t helpful. This only limits flexibility in difficult cases and puts more pressure on a field that I feel is already underappreciated in the sciences and possibly the general public.
Lastly, I don’t like the idea changing anything that’s already accepted following the nomenclatural rules. It’s a taxonomic stability issue. Taxonomic changes are common but they are for biological/evolutionary reasons. I’m really not in favor of broadening this to include names we don’t like for less scientific reasons.
I’m just going to leave this here and run: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/new-appalachian-lichen-named-after-dolly-parton
What comes to mind is the butterfly Agraulis vanillae. Its larvae feed on passionflower.
A bigger issue I see, especially with birds, is that many of the individuals so honored were despoilers of nature. Naturalists of the nineteenth century tended to shoot whatever they saw, to try to collect series of specimens of each species and fully document its variation. Egg collecting was also a thing back then – take the eggs from the nest, puncture the shell and blow out the insides, and keep the shell as a specimen. The egg-collector of that time preferred to get a complete clutch. So we might have a species of bird named after whoever shot it first or most.
And that is true in Africa and South America also.
On the other hand, the genus Cayaponia is named after an Indigenous culture. That is a naming option that seems to have been little explored.
I’m not a biological scientist, but with degrees in philosophy and theology, I’m reasonably well qualified in ethics. From that point of view, it’s worth identifying some of the questions being sorted through in this conversation.
(1) Assuming that any human naming system is by definition anthropocentric to some degree, one question is how to define what is too anthropcentric. Is it more anthropocentric to use the given name of an individual human, than it is to use specific human-centered descriptive terms, taken from human languages (Latin, English, etc.)? Where do you draw the line as to what is too anthropocentric?
(2) A separate ethical issue touched on above is political or national biases in names, e.g., should the names of European scientists be used to name Asian species, esp. where the European scientist belonged to a nation that engaged in colonial rule? This gets us into the interesting question of the political implications of the use of Latin for scientific names (a European language, as opposed to using, e.g., Mandarin, Ewe, etc.).
(3) I’m hearing some possible political agendas at work in this conversation. So, should science remain aloof from politics? Does that mean that scientists should avoid any names that have any political implications? Who gets to decide what constitutes a political name? And can you assume that there’s a “view from nowhere” that’s completely neutral politically?
(4) Then there are the ethics questions that overlap into interesting areas of the philosophy of science: If some names are deemed unacceptable, who gets to decide that, and how? (And before you reflexively reply, “Democratic process,” remember that valorizing democratic process is in itself a cultural political stance; then see Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005.)
(5) Should naming decisions be left up to the scientists, or should non-scientists also have a say? If you want non-scientists to have a say, then which non-scientists – amateurs or hobbyists in that scientific field, politicians, religious leaders, Uber drivers, who? If only scientists get to have a say, which scientists: do all biologists get to have a say in all naming decisions? or do only, e.g., ornithologists get to have a say in ornithology naming decisions?
Hope this doesn’t seem too far afield, but I’m feeling that this conversation is running madly off in many directions at once. A little attention to the various ethical questions embedded in this issue might help forward the conversation.
I have always been big advocator on assuring people that honorific names are ok. We name our children after people, our pets are people or characters (my two dogs are named after Star Wars characters), and we named rivers, mountains and other geographical features after people. The big question is, what is wrong with organisms being named after people? I see two benefits coming from such naming.
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The Latin language is not that big. Locale and honorific names immensely enlarges your available choice of names for new organisms. As @silversea_starsong mentioned, you have limited choices and names conflict each other if it’s named after a feature. Why not increase your spectrum with honorific?
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I find an animal being named after you being the greatest honor you can give someone in the science community.
I also think that we as a human race are too sensitive to honorific names. There’s not much you can do about it. If the organism has a common name, you can change that but that’s it. No organism has ever had it’s scientific name changed (excluding genus changes). A blind beetle in Germany is still retaining its name after Hitler. It’s for this reason why I wondered why the name changing of the McCown’s Longspur was such a big deal. Sure the common name is changed by the species’ name in Latin is still McCown and you can’t change it.
I had this discussion today when I was out birding today with a friend and we agreed that our brains are like computers. When we learn a species’ name, it’s programmed to remember that organism as that. I know birders much older than me who still call Long-tailed Ducks an Oldsquaw because that’s how they learned it. On instinct, I still call it a Gray Jay and their name change is just not catching on with me simply because I’ve been calling them Gray Jays all my life. I suspect the same thing will occur with me and Thick-billed/McCown’s Longspur.
It is not only insects. Fungi is another huge group for which there is just not enough words in Latin to make the names descriptive. Compare the number of birds worldwide and the number of fungi or insects. I think, that many people here who complain about human names for organisms have in mind comparatively small (and well known) organism groups. Another thing is difference between common names and scientific names. In fact, all birds and mammals have common names, but most of fungi and invertebrates don’t and probably will never have, so this is not an issue at all. See, e.g. this thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/the-right-of-a-fly-to-a-common-name/14842/61
In the end, there is no necessity to use human name in the common name if it is possible to use a descriptive one. Another thing is about people after whom the species are named. The rule should be that species are named solely after the researchers in that particular field, but there is no such rule. Not so very long ago there was an uproar in lichenological community when a new species was named Caloplaca obamae. Most of lichenologists protested, but this was not against the rules, so it stayed. Personally, I am very firmly against such practice. As to the older names, yes, there are controversial figures or downright history monsters after which species are named. However, I would be careful condemning early nature researchers as nature killers. It was only comparatively recently that we started to understand damage to nature and nature conservation. And started to understand with the help of that condemned early research, too. Just think of the great conservationalist Gerald Durrell, who started his career by doing damage to nature (from the present point of view). However, withoutthe knowledge which he gathered during his animal catching trips he would never have understood the scope of of the conservation necessity.
I think if that’s someone who helped with discovery or someone from the describer family (usually daughters, wives, etc.) it’s more or less ok, beautiful name (without surname) is not very different than the names from myths that are widely applied e.g. in entomology.
I think this is a really good contrast to organism names. Unlike organism names geographic names change all the time. There are countless historical maps riddled with slurs, but as society changed what is considered acceptable the names on the maps changed too. This is fundamentally not how binomial names work, and the desire by some to not honor grave robbers or have slurs writ in stone is at odds with the desire for taxonomic stability. I don’t think its possible for contemporaries to know how the future will view individuals, but with so much value put on stability shouldn’t there be an attempt to future proof our names.
Maybe its just me, but coming back to this comment after sleeping on it I could remember cozumelensis no problem, I had the first half of mesembryabnthematifolia, and all I could remember was that there was an awkward dl somewhere in fendleri. I never have been good at remembering peoples names though.
Well, why not ask the species itself what it prefers?
For 20 years I dreamed of naming a species after the man who introduced me back into the natural sciences by getting me into birding, which led me eventually into entomology and changed the course of my life. Last month that dream was realized by naming a new species of cicada after him. That genus has 58 species, most of which have names that in no way relate to useful morphology nor could they be due the difficulty of identifying them. Many were named for other people who simple contributed specimens back in the 20’s to an entomologist named Davis who pioneered the work on the group.
Here is my dedication in the paper.
“Etymology. The species is named after Charles Bowen, a naturalist from Belize who kindled the senior author’s interest in the biological sciences.”
I have no apologies.
I’m ok with taxa named for people. I just want good taxonomy that attempts to represent the phylogenetic relationships of the organisms. I’d rather have good taxonomy named after bad people than poor/fraudulent taxonomy with neutral descriptive names.
Any time you put a name on something, if that name is derived from some person or some element of human history, there will likely be opposition from someone, if not now then at a later date. Unless it’s a scientific name, we can change it if so desired. Given that a scientific name is forever (even if that taxon is eventually sunk into synonymy), it is incumbent on the describer to take the task seriously. I personally don’t like taxonomic names based on a joke or pop culture or a celebrity; it might have been amusing to the describer at the time but the humor wears off quickly. And then we’re stuck with it.
If I were to describe a species I’d likely seek opinions from my colleagues and others familiar with the organism. The name should be non-controversial, descriptive if possible (although I’m not opposed to eponyms), and as simple as possible to minimize misspellings. I probably would not reach out to or be bound by the opinions of the general public, especially after the Boaty McBoatface fiasco when trying to name a ship.
I also prefer it like that.
I do not mind about semantic redundancies, for instance:
- Boehmeria macrophylla Hornemann, 1815 (many synonyms on POWO and here, curation needed?)
- Boehmeria grandis
- Boehmeria grandissima
The most famous name after someone is likely Victoria regia, renamed Victoria amazonica, the Giant Water Lily.
A common name after someone: on the Réunion island, the Galabert is Lantana camara, named after Father Galabert who introduced it to the island.
A few of our Cape plants are named exasperata Bad day at the office?
Actually, one of the meaning of the word exasperatus is ‘rough’. Meaning rough surface. In botany and mycology it is this meaning that is used. Actually, very descriptive. For example, Melanohalea exasperata is rough, indeed :-)
Second that. I always wanted to name a species after a person who introduced me into lichenicolous fungi. Did that last year. My two co-authors wholeheartedly supported the idea. The genus, Endococcus is one of the most difficult as regards to finding descriptive characters. And the new species differs from the five most similar ones by the set of small anatomical characters, none of which can be singled out.
I completely disagree with naming organisms after people. Like many others, I don’t care who worked on a certain species. I’m fully in favour of descriptive terms for both common and scientific names. As mentioned, surnames give no useful information about a species.