There’s already a topic about offensive common names, but this is about scientific names. Often there are flags about potentially offensive common names (and rightly so). What I don’t see as often is flags when scientific name are potentially, or actually, offensive. This topic is prompted by https…

Well I’m shocked. Most of the naturalists I’ve met have a strongly sophomoric sense of humor. How could this thread have gone on this long without anyone mentioning the genera Phallus (stinkhorn mushrooms) and Clitoria (butterfly peas)!?!?

These are not the heresies they are looking for.

There are definitely stronger examples of Eurocentric naming like plant genus Tropaeolum , named after Roman post-victory rituals. The cited example makes a better case for not naming plants after plants, like with Verbesina encelioides making sense only after becoming familiar with Encelia . I pers…

[image] vreinkymov: However, I agree with one of your previous comments that indigenous people out to have an outweighted right to scientific names, especially in cases where the taxon is endemic to them. That’s the point where I start to struggle. Do we believe that indigenous people somehow…

I think the first question assumes the position that they don’t have a better understanding, which is problematic because it’s an untested assumption. This is just one case, but when I read Temalpakh: Cahuilla Indian Knowledge and Usage of Plants , an ethnobotany book for my area written by an anthr…

[image] vreinkymov: Therefore, indigenous people aren’t just randomly naming things and maybe some of these existing relationships might better inform naming practices. Other people coming to a new for them land also don’t name things randomly, it’s not like one nation is better at feeling th…

When British and Dutch people came to the Cape, they left a trail of Cape … whatever. Those names have no meaning for the people who live here. It looks like … something we have never seen. We have over a hundred comments here. How many read or spoken languages among us? Why not add Botanese as Esp…

[image] anon93074988: Or are we really just having a conversation about how to make some people feel better (and not necessarily the indigenous people) about some historic wrongs? If so, why? Partly, because these wrongs are not so historic. Indigenous people are still fighting to reclaim muc…

Not at all. The original post was for potentially offensive scientific names. Every commenter than took it in the direction of potentially problematic historical figures. Which historical figures are offensive depends on which point in history you are in and who wrote it. I agree with the concep…

Offensive scientific names

Nature Talk

vreinkymov October 6, 2022, 7:40am 110

Phallus and Clitoria might fit better as a comment in: Funny, long, or just plain weird animal names. I know it says animal names, but there have been many plants posted there already, so why not Fungi?

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Offensive scientific names

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