I get that their general locations often appear in species names (African Elephant, Mexican Jay, Texas Spiny Lizard), but for species I know living in Texas, I notice Carolina really seems to punch above its weight in this regard. Off the top of my head I can think of the wren, anole, wolf spider, chickadee and horsenettle. Did there just happen to be some prominent taxonomist from the Carolinas around at the right time to identify all these major North American species, or what was the history behind this?
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Same question (effectively) here ; https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/virginia-names-in-north-america/3341
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Awesome. I suspected something like that. That thread was a great read, thanks :)
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To confirm some of the explanations in the other thread:
Names of regions and countries as used by earlier authors, particularly Linnaeus and his contemporaries, do not necessarily apply to exactly the same regions and countries as possess them today. Sometimes they were vaguely applied; often boundaries have changed. Many have become obsolete. […] `Canada in the Linnaean sense does not correspond to the modern Dominion of Canada but to a region of north-eastern America, partly in Canada, mostly in the United States, where Kalm did much collecting’.
– From Botanical Latin, 4th Edition, by William Stearn.
Canada, Virginia, and Carolina particularly fall into the ‘vaguely applied’ category.
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