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

[Richard Pyle]

Thanks for the link!  This perfectly supports the point I am trying to make:
There is now "one" reason why authorship information is appended to a
scientific name -- different people see it in different ways; and evidently
it has been that way for at least the past 120 years or so.

Aloha,
Rich 

P.S. My apologies to the immediate family of all list members whom I have
killed through my contributions to this thread.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Mesibov [mailto:mesibov at southcom.com.au] 
> Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 1:35 AM
> To: deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
> Cc: TAXACOM
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] FW: formation of zoological names with 
> Mc, Mac, et
> 
> 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