[Taxacom] ICZN Opinion 105

[Richard Jensen]

And I thought I was the only taxonomist who did not have a portable 
label writer with a 1GB drive for storing all the names I need. ;-)

On 5/17/2011 12:12 PM, John Noyes wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> Yes, but in my view long names are a pain and not necessary. I think it
> should be possible to limit new names to a maximum of 7 or 8 characters.
> That should be enough to make them pronounceable and memorable. It also
> makes a binomen a hell of a lot easier and less tiring to write,
> especially on determination labels if required.
>
> A combination name, such as "Brassolaeliocattleya", is only easy to
> remember for those who know the original names, and just imagine if it
> were to be used as the stem for a new family group name!
>
> John
>
> John Noyes
> Scientific Associate
> Department of Entomology
> Natural History Museum
> Cromwell Road
> South Kensington
> London SW7 5BD
> UK
> jsn at nhm.ac.uk
> Tel.: +44 (0) 207 942 5594
> Fax.: +44 (0) 207 942 5229
>
> Universal Chalcidoidea Database (everything you wanted to know about
> chalcidoids and more):
> www.nhm.ac.uk/chalcidoids
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Richard Jensen
> Sent: 17 May 2011 16:58
> To: fwelter at gwdg.de
> Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] ICZN Opinion 105
>
> Francisco,
>
> I certainly agree with your hypothesis that longer names are more likely
>
> to be misspelled.  But, I don't see that as sufficient reason to insist
> on short names.  Long numbers are more likely to be mistyped, long
> sentences more likely to be misquoted and misunderstood etc., but we
> deal with these every day and still make it through.
>
> Something else that should enter into the quality of a name is the
> mnemonic factor.  If there is something that makes it easily remembered
> (your "easily memorable"), then I think that should outweigh length and
> likelihood of being misspelled.  As Adam Cotton noted,
> "Brassolaeliocattleya" is of hybrid origin and that makes it easy to
> remember the three components of the name.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dick J
>
> On 5/17/2011 12:38 PM, Francisco Welter-Schultes wrote:
>> Dick,
>>
>> Recently there has been a discussion in the [iczn-list] mailing list,
>> an English native speaker proposed to compose a short guide for
>> establishing new names, and insisted on including a bullet point that
>> the pronounciation of the new name should be specified, in the
>> form "see-men-kya-vitch". It took long time to convince him that the
>> unclear pronounciation of written new words is only a very special
>> problem of the English language, and that in most other languages the
>> pronounciation of an unknown new word is clear from the spelling.
>>
>> The Code cannot give a definition for "easily memorable", but the
>> quality of a name in this sense can be tested by trying to find
>> the name in GBIF, globalnames or other data aggregators, where
>> you can see and count the many different ways such a name has
>> subsequently be misspelled since it was established.
>>
>> The correlation between length of a name and the number of recorded
>> misspellings could also be researched by this method. I would
>> generally predict a relationship "the longer the name the higher the
>> likelihood for misspellings, and the higher the number of recorded
>> different spellings in GBIF".
>>
>> Selecting a name that will be easily misspelled will provide
>> obstacles to future scientists who need to find information published
>> on the species.
>>
>> Francisco
>>
>>
>>
>> University of Goettingen, Germany
>> www.animalbase.org

-- 
Richard J. Jensen, Professor
Department of Biology
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Tel: 574-284-4674