“It tends to honor people who are already privileged and well-known and it doesn’t necessarily apportion recognition fairly. The people who get to be scientists, on average, are from more privileged backgrounds.”
Absolutely not true, I know a number of entomologists and others that are not from privileged backgrounds and have become specialists in their fields and find that assertion to be quite insulting to those who made their way thru the system with nothing more than talent and hard work. My father and uncle both being a couple of them.
Having said that I am not at all a big fan of common names of any sort.
For all of you citing particular examples as support for your arguments, please remember that small samples may not be representative of larger trends. Remember your statistics classes…
Again, people don’t seem to be following the “tends to” grammatical construction. No one has said that every scientist in the world is from a privileged background. But I live in India and have worked or gone to school with thousands of scientists in the USA, Bangladesh, and Thailand (along with many European scientists who work in those places), and it is clear that on average scientists tend to come from more privileged backgrounds and live more privileged lives than the average person. I’m quite certain you’ll find that the conclusion of every study on the subject (I’m aware that an extremely small minority of taxonomists did not attend college, but over 99.9% do, and even the act of being able to attend college and earn a STEM degree is something that the globally privileged are far more likely to be able to do than the rest).
Here’s a small data point: I grew up in a working-class background. My parents made almost exactly the US median. And yet when I went to a STEM school, I was literally the 2nd-poorest person in my entire freshman class. With just two exceptions, every person in my freshman class came from an above-average socioeconomic background. Nearly everyone, including myself, had a parent who had gone to college (which was true for a minority of Americans at that time). And there were only perhaps 3 people in the entire class who were not of White or Asian background (and of the Asians and Asian-Americans the large majority were ethnically Japanese, Chinese, or Korean).
Of course, above-average in the USA is far above average globally, putting you around the top 5% right away. Which likely in part explains why so many Asian/African species are named after White scientists, while comparatively few American/European species are named after non-White scientists.
And my experience in Asia is that science as a career path is even more tilted towards the privileged there than it is in the west. The pathway for a non-privileged person in most Asian countries to just get to college, let alone qualify for a STEM degree, then an advanced degree, and then actually make a career in science, is very, very difficult.
Again, “tends to”. Not every single one. But as the general tendency I don’t see how my assertion is remotely disputable.
I’ve found or been involved in the finds of a number of undescribed frogs, lizards, and snakes. I “may” end up being involved in naming one eventually, but the big issue where I work is overcoming legal barriers to collection and DNA testing in the area (once again, something in many cases that only relatively privileged persons are officially allowed to engage in), as typically only those who can legally collect samples are able to put together enough information to publish. I may end up getting a say in naming one of them at some point, but probably not.
It isn’t always like that, as several have already noted. I offer the White Cloud Mountain minnow: Tanichthys albonubes. It means, “Tan’s fish of the white clouds.” Tan was the local guide who led the ichthyologist to it.
Fair enough. However, I think the point is that honorific names need not fall disproportionately to the white and the privileged. Perhaps they have historically done so; but then, that is true of a lot of things – how many nonwhite people will you find on, say, a playlist of classical music? In more recent times, their numbers have increased, and I see no reason why that cannot also happen in taxonomic naming.
Personally, i don’t think any human, no matter how wonderful or important or special, should have an entire species of organism named after them. This is a unique entity of organism that has been on the planet as long as us through its evolutionary history, it feels like hubris to name a species after a human. I get that in a fly with 300 species that can only be distinguished by genetalia, it’s hard to come up with descriptive or locally cultural names for all of these. But honestly, i’d rather see organisms named after Marvel characters (part of our culture’s mythology) than an actual living person.
also i want to echo the others who have said that power structures are very much influential in how organisms are named. I don’t love the word privilege because i don’t think it really describes what is going on in a direct way, but for lack of a better word yes. Science is not merit based and naming of organisms is not merit based, if it were it would be very different (and i’d still not be into it for the reasons mentioned above)
It isn’t always like that, as several have already noted. I offer the White Cloud Mountain minnow: Tanichthys albonubes . It means, “Tan’s fish of the white clouds.” Tan was the local guide who led the ichthyologist to it.
Yes, there are rare exceptions. But after 300+ years these exceptions have not become the norm, and there is little indication that they will become the norm. And as Charlie just said, even in those cases, it seems unnecessary and self-centered to name an entire species after one individual human being.
Fair enough. However, I think the point is that honorific names need not fall disproportionately to the white and the privileged. Perhaps they have historically done so; but then, that is true of a lot of things – how many nonwhite people will you find on, say, a playlist of classical music?
The difference being that classical music makes no claim to universality. It’s a particular art form that originated in Europe, the names attached to it are the particular people who composed those songs, and those of us who prefer other art forms do indeed have long playlists with primarily non-white composers on them.
However, scientific names make a claim to universality - it is dictated that these names are the ones EVERYONE must use, wherever they are in the world. And the human names being attached to them are not the people who created those organisms, or even discovered them, but simply the personal whims of those who can get published by journals. If you’re creating a universal name for an organism, why limit the name to something so particular and irrelevant to the organism?
Perhaps new species descriptions should be just a taxonomic serial number with no use of a binomial. Numbers have no cultural bias. That would eliminate any possibility that someone somewhere might be offended by a species name.
Any name has no connection to the organism, no animal calls itself a human name, no plant would have a name at all, all those constructions are artificial, I don’t see how it’s an argument, every name of anything is just a compilation of letters or sounds, there will never be a name that everyone would agree on, specimens don’t care at all how people call the species, they don’t know what it is. Calling a species is human-centric, you don’t ask dog how it calls itself, you just use what you find better suited. Blaming people that they had more resources is just weird if they used that for studying species that were there all along and local community didn’t have enough interest in them.
OK, have a try then. Here is the character comparison table used for five species of Endococcus (Ascomycete) used in a description of a new species. There are 41 species in the genus with overlapping characters. To narrow abit, we selected to compare the species which had spores 20 μm and more length. Sorry, the table is not very well transfered, but it is still discernible. And always remember that there are 36 more species among which there might be ones (or rather there are) with the character you have selected. And don’t try to tell that you are not taxonomist. The job is done - you only need to find a descriptive character for a name.
Host Lathagrium auriformeParasiphulaRhizocarponPolyblastia sendtneriLecidella carpatica
Ascoma size 140–165 × 125–150 µm 100–130 µm diam. 130–220 µm diam. 100−250 µm diam. 150–185 µm diam.
Number of ascospores per ascus 8 3–6 (8 when immature) 8 8 8
Ascospore wall ornamentation smooth minutely verruculose when young, later smooth smooth finely verruculose, later smooth verruculose
Ascospore colour greenish brown, hyaline when young dark brown, hyaline to greyish when young medium brown, pale to olive grey when young pale to medium brown Nd
Ascospore size 13–21 × (3•5–)4–5•5 μm (15–)17•2–21•8(–24) × (5–)6•6–8•9(–10) μm (9•8–)15•3–18•9(–23•2) × (5•8–)6•7–7•9(–9•5) μm (10•5 –)13•1–17•7(–22•0) × (5•0 –)6•4 –9•2(–12•5) μm (15–)18–23(–25) × (6–)6•5 – 8(–9) μm
Ascospore shape caudate, tadpole-shaped soleiform ellipsoid to obovoid, often curved narrowly obovate, oblong or occasionally ellipsoid Nd
Oh. I’ve heard that enthusiastic idea some 20+years ago at a conference. Well, I suppose it would be much easier for any naturalist to discuss: no, this is not clade 0002453698744221133559998002, it is clade 0002453698744221133559998013. Doubtlessly, it will be much easier to learn than any names: honorific, scientific or whichever. Actually the second sentence is almost verbatim citation of a comment (sarcastic) from a respected taxonomist.
Nothing in that table tells me anything about the range, habitat, or other characteristics of each of those species, any of which could be pulled for a meaningful name.
The name doesn’t even have to describe a characteristic that “uniquely” applies to only one species, just like a White-tailed Deer isn’t the only deer in the world with a white tail, but is still more meaningful than if we called it “Humboldt’s Deer”.
Because he wasn’t proposing it seriously. It was trolling. The suggestion clearly goes against virtually everything we’ve been suggesting about naming. You also are ignoring virtually all of the arguments made in this discussion in favor of the condescending suggestion that people are just “offended” by a name.
It is because they all (41 species) have wide (continent, Hemisphere, worldwide) distributions, very variable habitats (from forests to high mountains), they all are lichenicolous. It is not for nothing these characters have been selected for comparison.
Again, jokes meant to belittle the arguments of the opposing side don’t help our discussion in any way. Look at how quickly we’ve gone off the rails already. If that’s the kind of discussion y’all want to have, there are plenty of other internet message boards where you can have it.