[Taxacom] formation of zoological names with Mc, Mac, etc.

[Francisco Welter-Schultes]

Dear Frank,

> (ZooBank is a US American venture and they do not know
> much about languages and scripts, and have no opinion)..."

> Back from vacation, I found this statement. It is wrong. ZooBank is 
> an ICZN venture. 
> We know something
> about languages, and sometimes even have opinions. 

When I wrote "they have no opinion", of course I meant theat nowhere
is visibly published anything on this matter.

> Be assured that 
> we are quite diligent and do our best to accommodate language
> peculiarities.

Thank you for having clarified this. The ZooBank homepage gave a 
different impression, which has led to my misunderstanding. The 
importance of languages should be given higher priority in the 
public outlets of the ZooBank project, and also in the ICZN 
presentations. It would be very useful to have the Code online 
also in French, not only in English. 

I would very much apppreciate if your opinions (for example which 
standards should be used for transcribing non-Latin author names) 
would be published on some internet page, and linked from the ICZN 
homepage. Many taxonomists and database providers ask themselves how 
to transcribe non-Latin author names, and nowhere a guide can be 
found, not even a proposal.

Francisco



University of Goettingen, Germany
www.animalbase.org