Taxacom: botanical names with racist history

[alberto ballerio]

 The circumstance that you found my comment "unduly arsh" means that I hit the target.
Maybe kaffir has acquired an offensive nuance in some restricted geographical/cultural areas, this does not justify to ask the whole world to change an international name. Similarly there are several geographical names which are somewhat banned in some countries, so, by following the botanists' reasoning, we should seriously think to suppress the scientific names of plants which refer to those toponyms. 
I find a little bit weird that the Congress "did not care about fine points of etymology": if an action dealing with the meaning of names taken by the body in charge of nomenclature  does not involve some research on the etymology, this means to be really careless.  The final result is, as we can see, a little bit comical. And they fully deserved this paradoxical exitus. 
The decision is of course on a single case but it's an open invitation to other similar appplications driven by ideologies, political views and other such things, that in the long run will unermine the credibility of the scientific community.
Sincerely,Alberto
    Il mercoledì 24 luglio 2024 alle ore 07:54:27 CEST, Paul van Rijckevorsel via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> ha scritto:  
 
 The proposal can be critized but this comment is unduly harsh.
First of all, the format prescribed for such proposals submitted
to an IBC is that the introduction should not exceed 400 words.
This tends to be applied somewhat unevenly, but there is a norm.
The proposal as published has an introduction that is more than
50% over the norm already, so faulting it for not being longer
(with extra 'proofs') is not respecting this format.

The derivation of Kaffir does not seem controversial (by and large)
and it seems quite understandable that the authors do not feel
compelled to go on at length into a topic that has its own Wikipedia
page in multiple languages.

As to the etymology of afer/afra, 1) the dictionaries at hand are in
no doubt about its meaning, and this is very long-established, and
2) if indeed /Erythrina caffra/ will now become/Erythrina affra/,
the /affra/ will stand out like a sore thumb, being bad Latin.
Obviously, the Congress did not care about fine points of etymology.
It did not even care that this odd spelling will, in perpetuity, draw
attention and raise questions. These questions can only be answered
by explaining its background. So if the intent is to make these epithets
disappear, the new decision is self-defeating, to a degree.

The idea that now the door has been opened to start replacing
common Latin words because they have acquired a decidedly negative 
connotation seems quite far-fetched. This decision concerns
a single case, dealing with a specific word that only came into Latin
at a late stage.

Paul

On 23/07/2024 16:41, alberto ballerio via Taxacom wrote:
>  What makes the whole matter particularly worrying is the poor background of the application by Smith and Figueiredo.
> Their rationale is indicated as such:
> "the epithets in question have the root caf[f][e]r- and derive from an Arabic word meaning “infidel” that was used in the toponym of a region in southern Africa and for its inhabitants. Although, when initially published, the epithets may not have been intended to offend,in present-day society they have taken on a decidedly negative connotation because the noun from which they derive is a racial slur in languages such as English, Afrikaans, Spanish and Portuguese. Aversion to using these epithets arguably applies more to plant scientists and other users of scientific plant names from Africa or of African heritage, but increasingly also to a larger user community."
>
> They do not provide any proof or evidence of such claims, i.e. which are the words involved in common language in contemporary English, Afrikaan, Spanish and Portuguese (Keffir? Caffer?), how many times those words are still used in contemporary language, etc. Nothing is written about these important points. They also do not provide any evidence of the "alleged" aversion to use these terms by contemporary people (apart from themselves) and finally, they do not explain why a parochial alleged problem which seems to affect a small fraction of world people, requires to change names purported to be used internationally.
> If we follow the same rationale of this reasoning, then also the latin adjective "niger" should have the same fate, simply because it recalls the term "nigger" used as an insult in current English language. Once again, do you really think that the whole world must follow the parochial problems of a single language or of a single culture and change hundreds of names, none of them used to offend black people but rather used to denote a morphological character of a species?
> Perhaps the key-point that shows the weakness of their argument is "in present-day society they have taken on a decidedly negative connotation": this questionable statement (and probably not only questionable but also applicable only to a limited number of languages and of people), if applied as a general rule would make nomenclature a provisional business, which will depend on the ever-changing  ideological, political, and religious views of the bodies in charge of changing the names. Basically the beginning of the end of a 250 years old tradition, which will become mainly a political business.
> I am pretty convinced that if what we read in The Guardian's scoop is true, then the botanists made a big mistake (and took a decision based on very superficial grounds).
> Best regards,
> Alberto
> P.S. by the way: the etymology of Africa and afer/afra is controversial but according to some students it means "colony", so, let's wait for the next application asking to change afer/afra too because they have an embarrassing etymology!
>
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