Is scientific naming a prestigious honor or a tool for personal spite?
In short: Naming a new species is a high-status privilege, but it is governed by strict rules. While scientists occasionally use the process to have a little fun, the real debate isn't about petty grudges—it is about the heavy weight of eponyms and whether we should name the natural world after humans at all.
In the world of taxonomy, naming a newly discovered creature is a prestigious task that requires significant thought and adherence to a lengthy list of formal rules. However, a significant portion of existing nomenclature is built upon eponyms—names that memorialize specific individuals. These can range from honoring a collector or a benefactor to celebrating a celebrity or a colleague. Official estimates suggest that eponyms account for approximately 20 percent of all animal names currently in use.
This tradition is deeply rooted in history, often tied to the colonization programs of European powers during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Because of this, the practice has faced intense scrutiny. In 2020, amid global protests and the movement to remove Confederate monuments, ornithologists began questioning the ethics of keeping bird names tied to slaveholders and Confederates. Other controversial examples include the cave beetle Anophthalmus hitleri, named in the 1930s after Adolf Hitler.
Today, an international group of researchers argues in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution that naming species after people is unnecessary and trivializes Earth's biodiversity. They suggest that species should be viewed as global heritage rather than being associated with any single individual. However, naming authorities like the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) have resisted these changes. Commissioners, including Luis Ceríaco, argue that the primary goal of nomenclature is stability and universality. They maintain that because 'offensiveness' is inherently subjective, it is not the Commission's role to make moral judgments or rename species based on social or political concerns.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Do Scientists Ever Name Creatures After People They Dislike Out of Spite?
- Also: Why Some Scientists Want to Stop Naming Organisms After People
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