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

[Bob Mesibov]

If you can stomach the Horror!, this gets intriguing as you go deeper into the background. The Biodiversity Heritage Library has an 1886 reference on N American bird nomenclature

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/1538

and on p. 57 there's a brief discussion on attachment of authors to names. Looks like the Taxacom thread is mirroring mid-19th century debates in some ways, and unless Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage and their contemporaries were *way* ahead of their time in ways we know not of (steampunk fantasists take note), the debaters were not concerned about names database users, but were very concerned about why an author should be attached and what that attachment signified.
-- 
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and
School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195
Website: http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/mesibov.html