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

[Stephen Thorpe]

I'm not sure that approach would be quite as sensible as it sounds, prima facie.  There might be better ways of giving people what they want, rather than trying to cram it all into author/date citations, thereby making them more complex than they perhaps ought to be. One major issue is whether the authority citation ought to tell us WHO named the taxon? In my made up example Examplus primus Smith, 1970, the citation doesn't tell us who named it, only that it was someone with surname Smith. It might be important to know who Smith is, but this is "metadata" over and above the authority/date/name citation. The only reason to cite the authority/date with the name is as an (imperfect) indication of homonymy and priority. Do we really want to pack a whole lot more complexity into the citation? Why not just list the extra info separately in a database, along with other info, like this:

Name: Examplus primus Smith, 1970
Original publication: Smith, A.B., jr. 1970a: Revision of genus Examplus. Journal of hypothetical taxonomy, 1: 1-2. [publication date: 1 January 1970]

________________________________________
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Chris Lyal [C.lyal at nhm.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, 2 September 2009 8:53 p.m.
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] FW: formation of zoological names with Mc, Mac, et

Rather that stating what people should and shouldn't use author names
and dates for, shouldn't we be compiling use cases of what they *are*
used for, and working up standards and requirements from that?

There are probably no formats where the name and date (year) are 100%
successful tools to meet a requirement - there have been a lot of
identified failures in this thread.  However, from those failures we can
develop solutions - if it is cost-effective to do so.

Cheers,
Chris


Dr Christopher H. C. Lyal,
Beetle Diversity and Evolution Programme,
Department of Entomology,
The Natural History Museum,
Cromwell Road,
London SW7 5BD
UK
tel: +44 (0) 207 942 5113
fax: +44 (0) 207 942 5661
e-mail c.lyal at nhm.ac.uk
personal page -
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/staff-directory/entomology/c-lyal
/index.html
electronic Biologia Centrali-Americana
-http://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/bca
World Catalogue of Weevil Names - http://wtaxa.csic.es/


-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe
Sent: 02 September 2009 07:24
To: Tony.Rees at csiro.au; 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

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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