[Taxacom] FW: formation of zoological names with Mc, Mac, et

Wed Sep 2 02:39:29 CDT 2009

To catch your wry note, you could think of it like this: homonymy applies to the mandatory (i.e. non-optional part of the name), and the whole point of adding the author/date to the name is to remove the homonymy of the whole name, so you can then see to remove the homonymy in the mandatory bit!

More seriously, the main problem here is that the Code is far from being logically watertight, but such tightness might be required in order to automate things in databases. But it would require a substantial rewrite of the Code, or else it is open to anyone to add the extra bits whichever way they fancy to their own database, leading to instability ...

Stephen

________________________________________
From: Jim Croft [jim.croft at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 2 September 2009 7:29 p.m.
To: Tony.Rees at csiro.au
Cc: Stephen Thorpe; fwelter at gwdg.de; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] FW: formation of zoological names with Mc, Mac, et

Yes we can agree on the principle and process a far as homonymy resolution goes.

In practice I would model all the ancillary stuff you would use to
clarify as metadata and not part of the name (as I think both codes
describe)

On a wry note, if they author/date were part of the name, whtne they
would not be homonyms...  ;)

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 5:14 PM, <Tony.Rees at csiro.au> wrote:
> Hi Jim,
>
> You have chosen a non-homonym name (so far as we are aware, maybe a cryptic one nevertheless) but what if there were/are multiple taxa called Eucalyptus deglupta? This is where the authority portions come into play, at least for information retrieval/name reconciliation purposes...
>
> Surely we can agree at least on this much?
>
> What about (e.g.) Ficus variegatus Blume (our friend once more!), a fig tree, vs. Ficus variegatus Röding, 1798, not a fig tree at all? (Hint: google images will give a clue...)
>
> You cannot say that the name alone is sufficient without the authority portion, to differentiate these two taxa.
>
> And in genera, approx. 15% of all names are homonyms, a much bigger problem :(
>
> - Tony
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Croft [mailto:jim.croft at gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, 2 September 2009 5:09 PM
> To: Stephen Thorpe
> Cc: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart); fwelter at gwdg.de; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] FW: formation of zoological names with Mc, Mac, et
>
> We are going to have to differ on this and I guess it is an artefact
> of how we each model (or not) our information.
>
> The only non-Australian eucalypt grows in Indonesia.  It was named as
> 'Eucalyptus deglupta' but a Carl Ludwig Blume, aka C.L. Blume, aka
> Blume, aka Bl.  He did this in (1849) in a publication commonly, but
> not ubiquitously abbreviated to Mus. Bot. Lugd.-Bot. on a page number
> I can not find because IPNI is not talking today and nobody else
> bother to record this vital piece of information.  Presumably it has a
> type which would anchor the name.
>
> The species does not have any or nomenclatural or taxonomic synonyms,
> but is also referred to as Kamarere, Indonesian Gum and Rainbow Gum
> and even 'deglupta'.  The names science has chosen to give this
> species is Eucalyptus deglupta from which you can deduce it is likely
> to be related to other species our Eucalyptus and very little else.
>
> All else is (pretty vital) metadata of the name taxon name that helps
> you clarify what it the name 'most likely' to applies to.  It sum is
> not the name.
>
> We could chose a taxon with ambiguous concepts for the same name, and
> then it gets *really* interesting...
>
> jim
>
> On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 4:23 PM, Stephen Thorpe<s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>> No way! The authority/date should be thought of as part of the name! The authority is only indirectly about a person. The authority for a taxon is however the surname of the author of that taxon is spelled in the original publication, i.e., it is a "nominal person". If it is Smith, then the authority is just Smith. The name needs to be linked to the original publication is some other (external) way. The only reason for having dates as part of names is because of PRIORITY, NOT to point to a publication. Ideally, in a database, a name needs to be followed by a field pointing to the original publication, maybe like this:
>>
>> Examplus primus Smith, 1970
>> Original publication: J. Smith, 1970a
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Tony.Rees at csiro.au [Tony.Rees at csiro.au]
>> Sent: Wednesday, 2 September 2009 6:02 p.m.
>> To: jim.croft at gmail.com; fwelter at gwdg.de
>> Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] FW: formation of zoological names with Mc, Mac, et
>>
>> Jim Croft wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>> I am getting quite worried about all this 'sanitization' of authorish
>> strings as though it has some sort of nomenclatural, taxonomic or
>> operational validity.  The author and date are not part of the name -
>> they are attributes of a particular use of the name.
>> </snip>
>>
>> Sounds a lot like operational and taxonomic validity to me. In the cases of homonyms at least, we need to distinguish between usages of a name - different authors/years/publications/pages, different usages, often different taxonomic status (nomen nudum or whatever). If we can't link together authority citations that are not identical but which are variant references to the same published name instance, then they all look like different name usages, which is incorrect.
>>
>> - Tony
>>
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>>
>> The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of these methods:
>>
>> (1) http://taxacom.markmail.org
>>
>> Or (2) a Google search specified as:  site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
>
>
>
> --
> _________________
> Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
> http://www.google.com/profiles/jim.croft
> ... in pursuit of the meaning of leaf ...
> ... 'All is leaf' ('Alles ist Blatt') - Goethe
>

--
_________________
Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
http://www.google.com/profiles/jim.croft
... in pursuit of the meaning of leaf ...
... 'All is leaf' ('Alles ist Blatt') - Goethe