This phenomenon is sometimes called the euphemism treadmill.
While “the euphemism treadmill” creates its own challenges, there are some good things about it.
It reminds us that language is a dynamic thing . . . just like organisms! Language is always evolving to fit its environment.
We are on an unprecedented journey towards greater empathy and compassion 
The biggest implication of all this is that it requires modifying the rule of precedence – the earliest validly published name may no longer be considered the accepted name; the next junior synonym would be elevated to that status. This is not merely a change in the names of some organisms; it is a change in the way the rules of nomenclature work.
That’s why they explain they just do it as a spelling correction. At the time of first publication, they didn’t check the spelling?..
This is not merely a change in the names of some organisms; it is a change in the way the rules of nomenclature work.
I think that boat may have already sailed, see https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/taxon_swaps/144016 where where CoF seems to have somewhat unilaterally renamed a species because the original description in 1877 mixed genders in their latin.
That action, whatever its merits, is already reflected in inat by the simple virtue of following CoF as a matter of policy.
The practical inconvenience is no different to renaming it because “oops we got the genus wrong”, which happens all the time - and in the space of political inconvenience, it should seem pretty self evident that “I find that really offensive” ought to carry more weight than “I’m not really bothered by it or what you want to replace it with”.
I do wish we were all a bit quicker to forgive thoughtless offence, but it’s not my place to tell people who are quite reasonably offended by genuine historical abuse that they shouldn’t be.
For the record, the genus name Aphloia is “wrong”, as it is based on a bad pronunciation and/or a bad listening comprehension: botanist Philibert Commerson heard “sans écorce” (“without bark”, hence the name a-phloia) when he was said that the name of this species is “change écorce” (“changing bark”, as can be seen on these observations 1, 2). At least “Aphloia theiformis” is correct: the leaves looks like Camellia sinensis (Tea).
Genus to be renamed?..
Also remarkable as there is only 1 species in the family.
And it’s not the only family with only 1 species, in the same order.
Please flag them all
Changing the ending of the specific epithet to match the gender of the genus is not unusual. It happens frequently when the original describer gets it wrong and years later some taxonomist discovers the error. Or a species gets moved to a different genus and someone forgets to modify the epithet. The code allows for that kind of revision.
It is not an actual change to the epithet unlike the situation being discussed here.
Science is done by people. There is no version of science that is somehow entirely neutral on things that affect people. So, since we can’t be entirely neutral, we might as well aim to be kind. (To people. The organisms don’t care what we call them.)
As I said previously, I’m not opposed to changing these names. I’m merely pointing out that this is a fundamentally different reason for revising taxonomy, one we apparently have not seen before and which lies outside what the current taxonomic codes allow for. It’s not based on any scientific reason or to stabilize an incorrect taxonomic arrangement.
I have flagged common names - and left a link to your comment.
There are also a bunch of (dubious) profile names which include ‘the K word’
and on the other side of the Atlantic with the N word ?
Right, that was kind of my point :) The argument that the world will somehow fall into disarray or species will fall off endangered lists because the list of synonyms just got a little longer is significantly diminished by this already being an accepted practice for Other Reasons.
And if people want to argue that incorrect latin grammar is offensive enough to justify the problems that any renaming creates … then I think that’s probably Q.E.D for fixing things that are consensus offensive in the language of today.
It is not an actual change to the epithet unlike the situation being discussed here.
Maybe not in spirit to latin language wonks (and I say that in the spirit of love for all true wonks!), but it equally breaks all previous links to the previously used spelling until everyone remaps them to the letters of the new name.
I don’t think renaming things should be done willy-nilly in any space, but when there’s consensus for change, then language lawyering over the fine print in The Old Rules isn’t a very strong argument against change, the very essence of science is fixing our previous assumptions and models when it’s clear our understanding has evolved and grown.
[Note: I use the word in question in my response below because it would be difficult to make my points clear without it. Also, I’m not at all using it in the way it is used in South Africa. But I have set the remainder of the post to be hidden by default as a precaution.]
My Arabic knowledge is limited, but I would say that the offensiveness of “kafir” in Arabic likely depends on context. Certainly, its offensiveness as part of common or scientific names applied in Asia and the Middle East would be unrelated to the clear offensiveness of the word used in South Africa.
“Kafir” and related words are used extensively in the Kuran. On its face, the word means “unbeliever” or, to use an older English word, “infidel”. Sometimes, the word refers to non-Muslims in general; other times, the focus is specifically on those who don’t believe in a monotheistic god (so, not Muslims, Jews or Christians).
My impression is that the word tends to have a much more derogative implication than, say, “pagan” would in modern English. That’s probably because modern English-speaking societies have become more pluralistic. If you called someone a pagan in the middle ages, that would probably have been a pretty strong insult.
In some Islamic cultures, the word is also used by extension to mean “foreigner”. For example, in Turkish, there are actually two words apparently derived from the same Semitic root, “kâfir” (direct from Arabic) and “gâvur” (from Aramaic via Persian). In both, the diacritic on the “â” is typically dropped nowadays. The modern Turkish word “yabancı” literally translates as “foreigner” and is the one you’d find used in a government document or newspaper. The word “kâfir” is mostly confined to a religious context. The word “gâvur” was the one used by the Ottoman empire to categorize its non-Muslim subjects. It is now mostly used in a xenophobic sense, such as by conservative Muslim politicians to label liberal Turks in cities such as İzmir. Basically, in Turkish “gâvur” is pretty offensive and “kâfir” isn’t.
Back to Citrus hystrix, I think we would need someone with knowledge of Sri Lankan culture to tell us if the name “Kaffir lime” is offensive. My reading of the Wikipedia article suggests that in Sri Lanka “kaffir” is just the name used for the the small Portuguese–Bantu community, without a current derogatory meaning. Slate magazine has a good article from 2014 on the pros and cons for regarding the fruit’s common name as offensive.
At least in botany, this has already been allowed by the rules of nomenclature. To promote nomenclatural stability, later names are sometimes “conserved” over older names when the older name was recently dredged up from obscurity, and the later name has long been in general usage for the taxon.
Such proposals to conserve names must be formally submitted and published, and then voted on by an International Botanical Congress.
It doesn’t modify the rule of precedence. There is already provision in the code for names to be corrected if they were originally published with a misspelling or incorrect grammatical gender. This vote simply recognises one specific new type of “misspelling” to be handled in the same way.
It will not result in junior synonyms being elevated if they weren’t already. This change doesn’t simply invalidate all names containing the original word, and let the chips fall to whichever synonym came next. It purely corrects the spelling of the original, without affecting its authorship or validity.
You can UNhide it, if that was for my benefit?
@cthawley has resolved the common names I flagged.
We have surely, someone from Sri Lanka on iNat, who could tell us if Kaffir lime is unproblematic there? (maybe not - only 5 Citrus obs in Sri Lanka!)
When is the “hitler beetle” (slovenian blind cave beetle)'s scientific name getting changed?
Botany agreed to change.
Zoology refused.
those seem like more of a reach… to me personally. and it starts to get potentially closer to losing some of the story of the initial discovery.
In the case of Anophthalmus hitleri, its scientific name has actually encouraged poaching and collecting, according to the Washington Post. (gift link) So in that case I think there’s a conservation motivation.
yeesh.