[Taxacom] Dishonorable people as species names

[John Grehan]

I agree its tricky. Sounds great in theory, less discernible in practice.
Some examples (such as Hitler) may be relatively straightforward, others
might open a can of worms. The article references removal of Confederate
statues as an example, but in some cases they have been offset by a plaque
outlining the transgressions (or perhaps there are cases of another statue
to victims being added). Then there are likely cases where a person is a
hero for one group or nation and a villain for others. Humans often have
the capacity to do great good and great evil at the same time. One option
(perhaps not feasible) might be to add to the name so it indicates
something about their bad character. I suspect that efforts to address a
person's character in taxonomy will run into a minefield - but who knows?
But on this theme in general, perhaps July and August should revert to
derivations of their original Latin names; e.g. to Quintember and
Sextember - probably corrupted that completely - but just to illustrate).

John Grehan



On Sat, Nov 9, 2019 at 1:38 AM Geoff Read via Taxacom <
taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:

>
> It's a  tricky one.
>
>
> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/scientists-should-stop-naming-species-after-awful-people/
>
> also the originator:
> https://twitter.com/WhySharksMatter/status/1192790203037040647
>
> --
> Geoffrey B. Read, Ph.D.
> Wellington, NEW ZEALAND
> gread at actrix.gen.nz
>
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