Talk:List of organisms named after famous people/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Untitled

This is useless to the average layperson. Without accompanying english translations that allude to what kind of animal they are, it's merely latin name dropping. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.242.122 (talk) 13:13, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Problems with this page

  1. Too much red
  2. No sources
    1. We don't know what these species are (animals, plants, fungi, archaea, bacteria?)
    2. Some don't sound authentic ("Zappa"? Just Zappa? What happened to binomial nomenclature? Is this a genus, family, or what?)
  3. It's a list (see What Wikipedia is not)

There are more issues, but I really don't feel like listing them all here. --Murphy2010 (talk) 21:45, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Zappa cannot be a 'family', as it doesn't end in -idae. All the taxa on this list have either genera, species or subspecies rank. It is pretty clear, as all of them are in italics, meaning that they have a 'genus' or lower rank.
Furthermore, I don't see why you think the ranks of the taxa would be relevant in this case... or in any case at all.
--Earrnz (talk) 02:14, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Furthermore, I am going to see if I can nominate this page for deletion. --Murphy2010 (talk) 21:45, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore, should people like Plato and Dante be considered "celebrities?" --NEMT (talk) 07:47, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

"A person"

Though not named after a single person, I feel that the extinct snake Montypythonoides riversleighensis should probably be listed here. Thoughts? Grutness...wha? 02:45, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

New items

None of these are currently included in the list, mostly because I haven't had time to find references, but I'm sure there are primary or secondary sources for at least some of these.

jonkerz ♠talk 15:13, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

From List of things named after Barack Obama#Biota:
From José Rizal#Species named after Rizal:
  • Draco rizali - known as a flying dragon, this is a small lizard.
  • Apogania rizali - this is a very a rare kind of beetle with five horns
  • Rhacophorus rizali - a peculiar frog species. Rhacophorus rizali
jonkerz ♠talk 17:17, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

More new items

http://www.pensoft.net/news.php?n=382&SESID=961ed61a6d19b87fcbcc0bfbb6cf8f19 / doi:10.3897/zookeys.405.7402 --Gerbil (talk) 15:30, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Green tickY Added, thank you Gerbil and Josef Papi! jonkerz ♠talk 15:59, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Structure and inclusion criteria

In order to make this list as useful, informative, aesthetically pleasing, and logical, I'd like to open a discussion of the structure and layout of entries. I think the current scope of "not including organisms named for fictional entities, for biologists or other scientists, nor for associates or family members of researchers who are not otherwise notable." is appropriate inclusion criteria, omitting the untold thousands of species named in in honor of taxonomists (even notable ones) which would make for a ridiculously long and hard-to-manage list. However, since bands (the Beatles, Pink Floyd) are included, there may be a slippery slope towards companies or institutions (e.g. the Golden Palace Monkey) so perhaps a prudent limit would be "notable people or groups of people, including musical groups, but excluding institutions or companies" (this does not have to necessarily be specified as such in the intro, but clear scope and criteria posted somewhere can be helpful). Also, it may be prudent to explicitly limit the scope to scientific names, excluding common names, since species may have multiple common names and/or an eponymous common name may not be reflected in the scientific name (although common names are often derived from the latter, e.g. Blahblah smithi aka "Smith's blahblah").

Currently the sortable table is useful, but somewhat tricky to add new entries. Also many entries have no taxonomic information (are they trees? bugs? mammals?), which is especially unhelpful for red-linked taxa, so perhaps a column could be added, with a handful of generalized common names to aid readers. For instance "Fly", "Beetle" or "Fern" probably sufficient and familiar enough to non-specialists, while "Scizomyidae" or "Staphylindae" would be overly precise, and cause related entries to not sort together., while "Diptera" and "Coleoptera" are comparatively unfamiliar synonyms for their respective common names, and this list should not be technical. More specific classification could be optionally mentioned in the notes section, as currently the case for some entries. Alternately, perhaps the table format should be abandoned for a more easily expandable bullet list, or split into taxonomically relevant sections (e.g. "Spiders" and "Insects" , each possibly with with a sortable table, which would allow for sorting into smaller, taxon-specific categories (e.g. orders of insect or families of spider). It would be great if this list could eventually meet Featured list criteria. I'm open to opinions and suggestions. --Animalparty-- (talk)

@Animalparty: I support adding a column with a handful of generalized common names, but prefer to keep the list as a table. I'm the editor who converted the list to a table, because 1) skimming the "list list" was hard with the names lined up in a zigzag pattern, and 2) a table is sortable, which is also helpful for a column with generalized common names. It makes editing harder, but we should always put our readers first. The biggest problem with the current list is that most entries are sourced to two personal websites (Doug Yanega's Personal Page and Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature). jonkerz ♠talk 16:21, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
I do believe sortable tables are better than bullet lists, and I've been adding original species description refs when I can find them. Adding a common name column will increase the smooshing-up against the image column, (e.g. table rows with more than a few words of explanatory text will be vertically stretched) so I think incorporating images into the table might be the best approach. --Animalparty-- (talk) 04:46, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
Support incorporating the images into the table. Great work on the list, Animalparty, with the sourcing and extra column and everything. jonkerz ♠talk 15:36, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it would be useful to split the table in categories of people: politicians, artists (writers, actors, singers, etc), etc., or maybe include this information in an additional column. Jrfep (talk) 12:29, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

images: problematic

The images can probably be organized more aesthetically and in a standardized way: e.g. both species and namesake photo of the same size, and possibly placed closer to the entry. The stacking of double images creates a less-than-ideal viewing experience on a mobile device or even a regular browser when the window is not fully expanded: all text content is shunted below the photos rather than alongside it. Incorporating images inside sortable tables would be an improvement, as seen for example in 2006 in paleontology. I would emphazie however, that not every taxon and namesake needs illustrating. Images for the sake of adding images only slows down page load times and clutters up pages. --Animalparty-- (talk) 04:40, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes I agree with this -- it should only be for taxa where the naming was due to some sort of likeness or something like that -- where a visual representation would be useful in seeing the connection between the two, I think. Umimmak (talk) 04:43, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and moved them into the table in-line, hopefully that looks a bit better. --TeaDrinker (talk) 14:35, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

More new names

All of the above entries have been collected from WP, but I have not had time to find sources yet. More names can probably be found by browsing Gielis's original articles (the author who named Adaina atahualpa and all the Hellinsia spp. in the list). jonkerz ♠talk 15:41, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

From [1] (in Finnish):
jonkerz ♠talk 16:56, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Cool, some of those are synonyms of taxa already listed (e.g. Sting's tree frog and Spielberg's pterosaur). Also, several current entries are invalid names, so ideally they should redirect to most appropriate taxon if not already. --Animalparty-- (talk) 17:53, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I've been focused mainly on collecting as many new names as possible. I'm sure there's a couple more synonyms in this list; should we remove the synonyms or keep them in the list with a redirect? More from Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature:

jonkerz ♠talk 18:30, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

There are also a number of new additions to source #3 in the reference list, the Curious Scientific Names page. Dyanega (talk) 21:16, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you, Dyanega. I'll take a look at it once I've added a couple of names to the list. jonkerz ♠talk 22:37, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jonkerz: I think synonyms are fine to include as long as they were validly published names (i.e. valid at one time), and ideally if linked from this article the redirect article should mention the patronym somewhere (e.g. taxobox synonyms or taxonomic history section, as in Rooseveltia frankliniana). I'd recommend omitting nomina nuda or nicknames such as "Elvisaurus", and only including species if the person already has a Wikipedia article (contra Doug Berman), to let the lagging notability index of Wikipedia decide who's "famous" enough for the list. Red linked species are of course fine (assuming they exist), as all species are generally presumed notable. --Animalparty-- (talk) 04:34, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

@Animalparty: I have stricken Berman and two nomina nuda from the list. Now I only need to find some time to work on the real list.. :) jonkerz ♠talk 22:37, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

From Curious Scientific Names:

jonkerz ♠talk 17:56, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

From The Eponym Dictionary of Birds

A
B
  • ...

jonkerz ♠talk 14:31, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Repeated addition of a non-notable person.

I've twice reverted the addition by anonymous IP 14.139.85.2 (talk · contribs), who insists on adding the species (Andhracoides shabuddin) named after a master's student. That's great for the student, and I wish him success, but it emphatically does not belong in this list, as the title explicitly limits this to famous (i.e. notable) people, and the introductory text explicitly sates: "It does not include organisms named for fictional entities, for biologists or other scientists, nor for associates or family members of researchers who are not otherwise notable." (emphasis added) Thus, even if the student were a notable scientist, he would be excluded from this list. I've already left a message on the IP's talk page, who appears to be solely adding content regarding the same person to multiple articles, representing a potential WP:COI. IP, please stop the repeated addition to this list, or discuss your reasoning here. --Animalparty! (talk) 02:20, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Two questions from a newbie to this page

Does the poinsettia qualify? Joel Roberts Poinsett was an amateur botanist, but mostly a diplomat. He was reasonably famous in his day.

I'm struck by the animal types in column two of the table being in many cases orders or sub-orders, and in a few cases families or even genera; while all plants are typed only at the kingdom level. Is that how everyone wants it, or would it be reasonable to type at lower levels? I can see arguments both ways. For example, I came here most interested in plants, and it was easier to sort the table with all plants lumped together. Or should there be separate tables for animals and plants? Or should there be one more column identifying kingdom, with the current more specific typings in the column after that? Jbening (talk) 18:51, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

The issue of how narrowly to categorize taxa was touched on above (see Structure and inclusion criteria), and I think utility should be the guiding principle. Groups that are reasonably broad (to facilitate grouping), commonly used, and familiar to most everyone should be used ("bird" rather than Corvid or sparrow; "beetle" rather than weevil; etc.). With plants, I feel there are less broadly known common names at lower levels. With plants I was thinking most general unless there are unambiguous, more specific common names. Ferns, mosses, conifers, are probably general and recognizable enough, and any members of the Cactaceae could probably be lumped as "cactus", but other groups are less 'lumpable', and might best be termed "plants", e.g. there are many species in the carrot family that are not called carrots. The number of members of each should be considered before splitting, as too many narrow taxa or common names would hinder the purpose of sorting like entities. --Animalparty! (talk) 20:03, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. How about poinsettia? Jbening (talk) 01:41, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Clarifcation regarding "biologists or other scientists'

I am seeking the thoughts of people on the prohibition of entries named after "biologists or other scientists". In English usage, "scientist" generally means a researcher within the fields of the physical or biological sciences. Thus, if a person is studying "science", it is generally taken to mean one of the physical or biological sciences. It is possible to think of the humanities as a form of science, and thus we have science, philosophical science, and even theological science, although this is not the everyday use of the word, and thus don't think these categories are applicable in this instance. My feeling is that the prohibition against having species included named after "biologists or other scientists" is to exclude the common practice of biologists naming species after colleagues. Am I on the right track here? Research17 (talk) 03:55, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

I've changed the text to refer to 'natural scientists', which may clarify the issue you ask about. Jbening (talk) 05:38, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
Yes, thanks for that. And, yes, your amendment does clarify. Thanks again. Research17 (talk) 10:29, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
Although I see taxa named after Nabokov and Akihito. I imagine Nabokovia is more for Nabokov's lepidopterological contributions rather than his literary ones. Ditto Akihito which is in reference to the emperor's ichthyological work... Should these be listed? Umimmak (talk) 23:17, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Just throwing out an idea

This might be more work than its corresponding output is worth, but I was thinking there would be a column for year of description, or maybe two columns allowing for author + year of description, or maybe a single column for the author citation, so one can easily see which the earliest named taxa were or get a quick sense of if the honored person was still alive or not, and also see if certain taxonomists named multiple taxa after famous people. I'm not good with table formatting, is this something find and replace or regular expressions could easily add new columns? Umimmak (talk) 06:34, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I think that would be overly cluttering, and needlessly complicating. We shouldn't try to plan for every conceivable thing readers might want to sort or view (bioligists would likely have different interests than the general public). I'm already concerned that the inclusion of author citations push this article towards the needlessly pedantic side (it's not necessarily a scientific article). Things like "Girault, 1932, nec Dahl, 1907, nec Evans & Chure, 1999" are especially pedantic and uncalled for, in my opinion. --Animalparty! (talk) 20:16, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
It's important because only Girault named his genus after the poet, its junior and senior synonyms seem to have different etymologies. And the wikipedia article for some reason is a redirect to the nomen novum for the junior homonym, so it's useful to clarify. Author citations provide an way to see if certain taxonomists are more prone to patronyms. And for zoological names at least the date being in the author citation also gives information about when it was named / if taxa were named together. They also help with verifiability: several of these names come from lists which have been copied and expanded over and over and are likely to include unchecked inaccuracies. Plus the author citation is a bit more helpful if someone wants to find more information about the taxon (including its existence) since searching for many of these taxon names just leads to more lists without any references to taxonomic literature. Umimmak (talk) 20:59, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
So how about just "Girault, 1932", which by definition excludes all other authors? --Animalparty! (talk) 21:13, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
Sure you can change it to that; that probably is just as helpful. Umimmak (talk) 21:20, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
Done. Also, I shortened authorities of more than two names to "First author et al", for conciseness. --Animalparty! (talk) 22:19, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
That makes sense; I think ICZN recommends it for three or more authors, but even then I don't think I was consistent. I'll continue with this new style. Umimmak (talk) 22:42, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

On another note, I see a lot of species name are piped in the form of [[existing genus name|non existing species name]] giving the appearance that there is an article for the species in question. This is something I've wondered about before, I almost wish there was a more generic use of Template:ill, i.e., "link to article A until article B is created". I don't have strong feelings on this, but perhaps they could be of the form [[existing genus name]] [[binomen|specific name]], so the reader can read the next best article, i.e., the genus, but still see clearly see that there is no article yet for the species. Or perhaps they should just be [[binomen]] and just ignore the page for its parent taxon. Umimmak (talk) 23:03, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

A typical random genus article is going to be a list of species with little further information. I don't think there's any point to taking readers to a genus when the species doesn't exist. They're not going to find the information they're likely looking for (why the species was named after the famous person in question) in the genus article. Splitting links in the form [[existing genus name]] [[binomen|specific name]] is bad practice; it leads to easter-egg links if and when the species article is created, and is discouraged by the draft MOS for organism articles. Best just to have the binomial as a red-link and hope that somebody is inspired to create the article. Plantdrew (talk) 00:45, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
That makes sense; I was just trying to come up with some sort of compromise since some earlier editor wanted to link to the genus.Umimmak (talk) 02:05, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
I just wanted to chip in that Umimmak's idea of something like Template:ill makes a lot of sense to me. I usually leave links red but have sometimes felt that "[[existing genus name]] [[binomen|specific name]]" is a better solution, though I recognize that it introduces other problems. Such a template would be a real solution.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  21:37, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
Thanks SchreiberBike. I brought it up at the MOS organism page Plantdrew linked above. Umimmak (talk) 22:24, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
I don't think that {{ill}} is a good idea in this case: most organismal articles in foreign Wikipedias are likely to be bot-generated stubs in Swedish, Cebuano, or Waray, that give essentially no more information than is already present in a binomial with author citation: Thus Gabrius appendiculatus [sv] is just a roundabout way to find out (after copying and pasting into Google Translate) that Gabrius appendiculatus Sharp, 1910, is a species of beetle in the genus Gabrius named by Sharp in 1910. It makes little sense to direct readers to a redundant, meager stub in a language they probably don't read. --Animalparty! (talk) 02:08, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
Right. I think that template was just an example of how a similar template could be made that would look blue-red like Cladomyrma sirindhornae, but would turn into a single blue link for the species when that species' article was created. The interlanguage link ({{ill}}) shows as a red link with a little blue link to the article in another language Wikipedia, but when the link is created in English Wikipedia, it looks just like a regular blue link. That's my understanding at least.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  02:20, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Okay I've finished the list; all should now be listed as their original combinations/basionyms and have the right author citation. There was only one taxon I was I bit suspicious of: Khruschevia. The only thing I could find on it were variations of "Rousseau H. Flower to show his dislike of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev and the Communist Party in general." Couldn't find details of the publication, didn't see it in any databases, didn't see it mentioned in any literature about invertebrate paleontology, just the same story again and again. Umimmak (talk) 04:32, 25 November 2017 (UTC) Update: thanks Animalparty for finding that Umimmak (talk) 06:45, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

On Khruschevia: I have not viewed the full document to ascertain etymology, but enough snippets can be found on Google Books to indicate that the genus Kruschevia was named in Flower, 1961, with type species Kruschevia verruca. Northrop (1962), p. 46, amended the genus name to Khruschevia. I have not yet found any primary literature referring to K. ridicula, oddly enough for such a widely reported anecdote. --Animalparty! (talk) 07:03, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
Well it's only the genus that's a patronym right, so perhaps the row should be changed to just Khruschevia Flower, 1961, especially since K. redicula wasn't the type species?Umimmak (talk) 07:16, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
Works for me! --Animalparty! (talk) 07:19, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
Okay cool, I made the change. Umimmak (talk) 07:25, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
Hi. I still find the Khruschevia entry somewhat dubious, since Flower's original paper does not explain the etymology of the name at all. According to Horenstein (2012), the story that everyone repeats comes from Richard Fortey's 2008 book Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum, in which I suspect Fortey may have been misremembering or embellishing things, but I cannot check it since I don't have access to a copy, and Google Books shows very little of it. El monty (talk) 23:55, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
@El monty: re Flower's original paper does not explain the etymology of the name at all, he does say on p. 104

In the preceding study of corals a number of specific names are descriptive, but where such names did not suggest themselves, or those suggested seemed already sadly overworked, the species have been named for beautiful women, particularly deserving of honor. In the present work the dilemma was worse; a few names are suggestive of form or appearance, but one could hardly draw upon affinities, when affinities remain uncertain, or range, when it was obvious that our present concept of range falls far short of the truth. However, I was not faced here with the necessity of selecting those whose names should necessarily be perpetrated, nor was I dealing with an application of names that was necessarily complimentary. One body, which resembles a fossil wart, I have named for a certain international figure whose activities in Washington made me seriously late in arriving at the U.S. National Museum. As for the others, most are unworthy of mention; to those who recognize their names, I can only say that those also serve who only stand and wait.

The only other time "wart" appears in the monograph is in the key: Small wart-like elevations composed of a number of small spherical calcitic bodies. Kruschevia (plus verruca is Latin for "wart"), and Khrushchev is certainly an "international figure". I do wonder if we should use Flower's spelling of Kruschevia or Khrushchevia which Northrop 1962 apparently amended the name to as per Animalparty: For example, the new generic name Kruschevia was recently proposed for a wart-like problematical organism of dubious affinities; to add insult to injury, the name was misspelled; it should be spelled Khrushchevia, but I'm not sure if that counts as a formal "justified emendation". The present spelling in the article, Khruschevia, is neither but that I think was just due to a mis-type. Umimmak (talk) 22:47, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for that correction, Umimmak, you are indeed right. Well observed. El monty (talk) 08:59, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
@El monty: the Horenstein paper you found explicitly says Flower was known to be a die-hard anticommunist in addition to mentioning the traffic jam he caused in DC, whereas the monograph only alludes to the traffic he caused. I suppose there are references for the article note that this reflects his dislike of [...] the Communist Party in general but it would be great if there were a better source. I'm certainly satisfied that it's at the very least meant to show some level of dislike towards Khrushchev. I've come across McClellan 2019 doi:10.1080/08912963.2019.1618293, which I'm liking as a secondary source because it only mentions Kruschevia verruca (spelling it as Flower did), actually cites Flower 1961, and also cites a personal communication from Flower with him saying "I named cephalopods after my friends, and worms after my enemies, only I could never get enough worms."
There's so little literature on this genus, like aside from discussion about the name of the genus itself I'm only really able to find Flower's description for Kruschevia and K. verruca. I've also come across Rowland & Neville 2000, a compendium of all of Flower's type specimens, and it only mentions Kruschevia verruca. This sort of makes me even more doubtful that K. rotundus and K. ridicula even exist since Horenstein claimed Flower named both of those. (Plus it's certainly odd for there to be an apparent grammatical gender inconsistency if Flower named both masc. rotundus and fem. ridicula.) It's also strange the Horenstein paper mentions K. rotundus and K. ridicula, but not the actual type species K. verruca which is the only one I've found evidence of Flower actually naming.
I'm sort of thinking this article should go with Flower's original spelling: Kruschevia. Maybe we can have a note that this sometimes appears as Khrushchevia or Khruschevia, but I'm not sure if those latter two spellings appear in the taxonomic literature or just these articles about interesting taxonomic names and if either counts as a valid emendation. I'm also thinking we remove the reference to the Mark Isaak website for this row since it refers to Khruschevia ridicula which I'm doubtful exists. Perhaps we can replace it with a ref to McClellan if we want a secondary source. Part of me is considering asking WP:RX to see if anyone there has access to the Fortey book, perhaps he better explains the confusion over the various spellings and species and properly cites his sources, but to be honest I'm not sure how helpful it will be. Umimmak (talk) 19:32, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

New information

I have information on Acisoma attenboroughi. According to british-dragonflies.org.uk/node/6486, it is also called Sir David's dragonfly. I would add the information, but I don't know how. Can someone lend a hand? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.243.254.2 (talk) 20:18, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

I formatted the information to fit with the other entries. I didn't see any other species' common names used though. Is there a consensus that we don't include that?  SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:40, 25 December 2017 (UTC)
@SchreiberBike: Is that actually its common name? The references just use "(Sir) David's dragonfly" as a title for the article/section, but neither explicitly says this is an accepted common name for the species. Mens et al. 2016 seems to suggest a common name "Attenborough’s Pintail", so one should be cautious about asserting claims for a species's common name. Umimmak (talk) 08:22, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
@Umimmak: Looks like you are exactly right. Thank you for correcting me. I'll revert that.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  19:12, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Named after Laika

There's a species of trilobite named after Laika, the famous space dog (also, a handful of other species were concurrently named after other Soviet space dogs, but they're not notable enough to have their own Wikipedia pages, so we can let them slide). I was going to add it, but I thought I might check first if anybody thinks it should not be included because Laika was not a person? Opinions? El monty (talk) 23:13, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Another possibility is that we could have a separate article for like List of organisms named after famous animals? Not every namesake in List of organisms named after the Harry Potter series has its own Wikipedia article. Or maybe a separate table for famous animals in this article. Not sure what best option would be. Umimmak (talk) 00:00, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
Mmm, I'm not sure if there are enough organisms named after famous animals to make up a proper list... Though actually, I do remember now coming across some critter named after a racehorse some while ago, I forget the name... Given how popular some racehorses became at various points in history, there could be more like it. I will look into it and see what I can find. Obviously that list could probably be plumped up if fictional animals were included, but I feel that would be cheating. El monty (talk) 10:55, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
Update: I just dug a little and found out that I was talking about a seahorse genus that Curious Taxonomy reports as Pharlapiscus, named after Phar Lap, but that genus doesn't actually exist. The one that did at one point was Farlapiscis (now subsumed into Hippocampus), but, while that name may well have been inspired by Phar Lap (it was erected in 1931, at the height of Phar Lap's fame), the original source for its description doesn't actually say anything about its etymology, so it can't be assumed as a certainty.
(BTW here's the link if you want to check, since I've been known to overlook an etymological reference in the past..;-) https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/38710890 El monty (talk) 12:17, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
Well, for what it's worth the Phar Lap/Farlapiscis connection is mentioned in Helen Scale's 2009 book Poseidon's Steed. Also, while I can't confirm this, the fact that both "Phar Lap" and "Farlapiscis" appear on the same pages of Gilbert Whitley and Joyce Allan's 1958 book The Sea Horse and Its Relatives makes me think that might be a useful source to confirms this as well. I don't think it matters that Farlapiscis is no longer valid, this article has plenty of invalid names. I'm still not sure if this would be a good separate article. I think if there were any secondary source talking about naming taxa after famous animals in general rather than a bunch of one-offs, then that would definitely help. Do you have the literature for the Laika / other space dogs? Those taxa might be useful in finding more sources. I'm presuming the taxa named after the spacedogs were the ones mentioned in Adrain & Mcadams 2012 for their species in Aponileus? Umimmak (talk) 22:40, 15 April 2021 (UTC) (Updated: 23:20, 15 April 2021 (UTC) ; 00:00, 16 April 2021 (UTC))
Adrain & Mcadams 2012 Aponileus, yes. El monty (talk) 08:42, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
I've created an article for Aponileus and discussed the Soviet space dogs there, and I've also added the information about Farlapiscis to Phar Lap's page under § Legacy. With the discussion here and the references there we'll at least have all this handy when we determine what to do about taxa named after famous animals. I'll continue to keep an eye out for any kind of secondary source which I think would help us. I definitely like the idea of having a list of such taxa on Wikipedia somewhere though. If you come across any more taxa in this category, definitely update this thread. :) Umimmak (talk) 04:19, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for this! :-) El monty (talk) 13:30, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Splitting this article

This article is currently the second longest on the wiki, with 533,000+ bytes. Since there are no sections however, it cannot be split by section. However, we can split this into different types of organisms: Animals, plants, bacteria, etc. There is unfortunately no way to calculate exacly how many of each category there are though. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 21:12, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

If it's a matter of file size, this article could be shrunk considerably by removing all the image links; i.e., eliminate the "Namesake Photo" column from the data table. The vertical size of the article while scrolling, and its ability to load, would both be vastly improved if there were no images. Even eliminating all the duplicate images of Sir David Attenborough alone would probably help. ;-) Dyanega (talk) 22:02, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
Yeah I mentioned above that to me the images would only be really necessary if the naming was due to some physical resemblance. That said, the file size bytes are just the text in the page, so just the amount of code to call the image, not the file size of the image, so I'm not sure how much that would help this particular issue, but I do agree that there are perhaps too many images.
If we were to split it, my gut instinct would have been to split according to which nomenclatural code covers it at a first pass, so Animals; vs. Algae, fungi and plants; (vs Bacteria and archaea), but the vast majority of these taxa seem to be animals at a quick skim. Other options that theoretically exist include splitting out all fossil taxon, by date of description/circumscription, by category of namesake (named after politicians/heads of state; named after actors; etc.), forking out specific authorities (Girault alone accounts for like a tenth of all taxa on this list, it seems!), or just alphabetically either by taxon or by the namesake. Some of these make more sense than others, figured I'd just throw out possible ideas. Right now it looks like we have c. 950 taxa in this list for reference. Umimmak (talk) 23:30, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
File size, table width, and rendering complexity can all be reduced considerably by removing the namesake image column and moving refs into the other columns as appropriate. The table should also be broken up into sections, either alphabetically or by clade. It's quite clear that this article is going to continue to grow indefinitely (I think it's too broad a subject to even cover, to be honest), and splitting it up into more than one will be necessary. pauli133 (talk) 10:51, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
Hi, thought should try to contribute something to this discussion, since I'm responsible for significantly increasing the size of this article in the last couple of months. In this process I have learnt that species named after famous people are not as rare as I thought! There really are a ton out there when you start to look. pauli133 mentions that the subject may be too broad to cover, but there are also a ton of listicles in the WWW about species named after celebrities/famous people, so it seems to me this list is relevant (It's just that those listicles barely scratch the surface of what actually exists). I see there's talk about eliminating the images; personally I can't agree, because I think they help the reader to place who we are talking about in each case; as Umimmak says, it seems to me that the bulk of the size of the article is not in the images, but in the text (actually, most of it is probably in the references, of which there are now about 500, mostly to scientific journal articles with long titles and lots of authors). I suppose I may have gone overboard in transcribing the etymological observations in some of the species, but I don't think much can can be shaved off by shortening them, though I will look into it. I also realise that loading all those images may take a while on some platforms (not in my computer or phone, TBH, even when using data), so we could consider a way to remove duplicates, but I would not support getting rid of them completely. Ideally, I wish the list could be divided in sections in some way, also to make it easier to navigate, but it's difficult to figure out how. For example, dividing by occupation of the namesakes, which has crossed my mind, will surely create headaches when we get to people who have done multiple things in their career (actors/singers, writers/politicians, etc.); dividing by types of organism may be the best bet, but that will prevent from being able to group in one go just how many species are listed for one specific person, and I think that would be an unfortunate loss. I don't know, I will try to think about it some more. But I warn you, I still have quite a number of names written down to add in the coming days and weeks! :-) El monty (talk) 13:29, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
It's been brought up before, but this list could be reduced a small amount by removing Vladimir Nabokov, Akihito and Hirohito. While they are famous for reasons other than their contributions to taxonomy, their status as namesakes of taxa is due to their taxonomic work. I'm not sure whether Albert I, Prince of Monaco quite qualifies as a "natural scientist" for the purposes of this list; however, if he's not considered a scientist himself, he was a major patron of science. I'm sure there are a lot of taxa named in honor of the financial support of a wealthy person, but that seems to be a little different than most of the examples in the list, and I wouldn't support adding lots of patron namesakes. Plantdrew (talk) 01:12, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
My opinion is that Nabokov, Akihito and Hirohito should remain. I know that they were honoured for their taxonomic work, but they are vastly more famous for other reasons, and apart from my belief that that fame must have played some part in the authors' motivations to name species after them, I think most readers of this article will not be aware of this aspect of these people's lives, so they should not be denied the opportunity to learn about it (as I myself did) by digging into this list. The same goes for patrons: I think patrons who were significantly famous for other reasons apart from being patrons of the sciences should also be in the list (other examples: Bill Gates, Dick Smith). El monty (talk) 08:41, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
We could remove the images but a lot of other list pages of this nature have images. I would say the best option is to split this article based on type of species. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 20:28, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the only way to remove the images in the source editor is to manually remove all of the images, and the VisualEditor is far too laggy. And I am not sure that there is any way to just eliminate the entire column. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 20:24, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
I tried to delete the namesake image column in VisualEditor but it caused my computer to crash. So someone with a very powerful computer will have to do that part. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 00:21, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
I've had an idea about another way the list could be split: by the time period of the namesake. So, let's say, a list for people born in the 20th century, another one people born in the 19th century, another one for people of the Early Modern period, another one for people from the Middle Ages and another one for people from ancient times. OK, immediately I can see how there could be problems; for example, some people strongly associated with 20th century events, such as Adolf Hitler and FD Roosevelt, were born in the 19th century, so that could lead to confusion. Also, the boundaries between time periods are often not clear or vary from one culture to another, so there could be doubts about where to place some people whose lifetime may have straddled two periods. But I just thought it could be a way to help readers who may be looking for current or recent celebrities, separating them from people of earlier times. This idea came about because I notice there seem to be mainly two kinds of name dedications: one for people who are currently (at the time of the dedication) alive or recently deceased, honouring them for their achievements; and another for people from the historical past, honoured for their cultural significance. El monty (talk) 10:18, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
I actually find some appeal in this timeframe idea, though maybe not so finely divided. That is, the act of giving scientific names is something that started in 1758, the official year that scientific naming "began" (as recognized retrospectively). Anyone who died after 1758 would qualify as a contemporary figure, relative to the biologists coining the names. Anyone dying prior to 1758 would be a historical figure, regardless of the person doing the naming. There is at least the potential there for two categories, then - one would be species named after famous contemporary figures, the other would be species named after expressly "historical" figures. It has the advantage of a very explicit criterion for splitting, the issue being that it only creates two sub-lists, and not more. Otherwise, so far I think the most likely suggestions to be viable are those based on which group of organisms is involved - though, again, I see this as only creating two sub-lists; those names given to animals (the vast majority), and those names given to all other organisms. The split suggestion of fossils versus extant taxa does not give nearly as big a split. Dyanega (talk) 16:56, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
In that case, we might as well split it by historical vs contemporary figures. Whichever one will give the biggest split. We should probably do it soon though, because this article will just keep on growing and growing. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 19:20, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
I have tested these splitting options by analyzing the first 310 entries (A-D). Splitting by timeframe (pre- and post-1758) and splitting by extinct-extant gave very similar results: around 20%-80%; while splitting by animals-other organisms worked even worse, because animals were a whopping 93% of entries (however, I tried other subdivisions: arthropods were 75% of entries, and insects were 50%). So if these results are more or less extrapolable to the complete list, there's not much difference between the first two methods; the problem with extinct-extant is that it doesn't allow for any subdivisions after that, so the article on extant species would quickly become too big again; with timeframe, the timeframes could be divided again as needed (though problems with the placing of certain people will always arise; in my sample, miraculously I didn't find many, but I did run into a handful of people, particularly Native American chiefs, who lived around 1758 or shortly afterwards but to whom the dedications were from much later, because no naturalist would have named species after them in their time; so their placing as "historical" or "contemporary" was dubious). Dividing taxonomically by type of organism is obviously the most clear-cut way, though it would force an uneasy division between insects and other organisms in order to work as a good split down the middle. I have two misgivings with that: one, that there will always be readers who are not aware that, for example, springtails, spiders or centipedes are not insects this could easily be dealt with in the introduction to each article; and two, that it places the focus of the articles on the organisms rather than the people: though I may be wrong, my impression is that most readers who come to this article will be more interested in the famous people, and learning what animals are named after them, rather than the other way around (I know that impression may not be backed up by the article's default layout, but right now you can always order by the namesake column to neatly group all organisms dedicated to one person, which you would not be able to do after the taxonomic split). So personally I still think that splitting by the timeframe of when the people lived would be the ideal way. But it's harder to do and it would likely soon force a second split down the line (maybe pre- and post-1900), so there's that. Anyway, I thought this info would be useful. El monty (talk) 21:12, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
I do agree. I feel like splitting by year (pre-1900 and post-1900) would be the best option. Either that or alphabetically. We should do something about this fast though, because unlike the other articles in Special:LongPages, this article is continuously growing. This does leave other questions though:
  • For an alphabetical split, would we split based on the person's name or the organism's name?
  • For a time period split, would we split it based on the person's birth or when the organism was named.
Since this article includes two factors (organisms and famous people), it will make a split more complicated. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 20:43, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
It certainly would be easier to split by date named since at least for animals that's already in the author citations...but I'm not sure if people would be more interested in the history of naming taxa after people or in seeing which people have taxa named after them. Throwing it out there and I imagine it would be a lot of work to see if this even gives us anything close to a 50/50 split but would it make sense to have Taxa named after living famous people and Taxa named after dead famous people? I had initially also wondered if we might just take out Genus-level taxa but there are I think too few of them comparatively for it to make a difference. I wonder if it's worth asking WT:TREE or some other venue... the size of this list makes it dauting to even consider having to look up information for each namesake. Umimmak (talk) 06:01, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
I was intrigued by that dead-alive namesake suggestion, so I tried it with the A-D entries (by now, 324). The resulting split was 63% dead - 37% alive (for group namings, such as organisms named after bands or families, I applied the rule that if any one member was still alive, they went to the alive column). Not a bad split, but it has two problems: one, the "alive" article would need frequent monitoring to see what entries need to be switched from one to the other; and two, it would mean that groups of organisms named after band members, which is a usual thing, would often find themselves split, with some in the "dead" article and some in the "alive" one. After this, I tested with people born pre-1900 and post-1900 (for group namings: if any one member was born before 1900, they went in the pre-column; I didn't find any cases in the sample though), and got a nice 46%-54% split. So I think this is definitely the way to go. If everybody is OK with that, I could start preparing the text files for the two articles (will take a while), so when they're ready, the split can be done in one go. BTW, what do you guys think should be the splitting date? 1st of January 1900, or 31st December 1900? El monty (talk) 12:24, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
I’m fine with that. Blubabluba9990 (talk) 19:00, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
OK, so I prepared the text files for the split, and unfortunately it seems that the ratio of the A-D entries doesn't quite translate to the article as a whole; the result of the split is 35% pre-1900 (207 KB) and 65% post 1900 (376 KB). However, for a 50-50 split, the split date would have to be something (even more) arbitrary (I think it must be somewhere in the 1920s), so I still think this is the best option, even if the post-1900 article will probably soon find its way back into the Special:LongPages list (BTW resplitting this second article again, say in 1950, will cause bands to be split too). Regarding the exact splitting date: I realise that the proper way to divide centuries is that they start on the '01 year and end on the '00 year, and that's probably the way it should be done. What concerns me is how to title the two articles. Earlier I thought it could be "List of organisms named after famous people born before 1900" and "List of organisms named after famous people born after 1900", but the problem with that is where to place the namesakes born exactly in 1900, of which there are two at the moment (Erich Fromm and Antoine de Saint-Exupery). Then I thought it would be better to apply the proper century division, but I feel that complicates the titles: "List of organisms named after famous people born up until the end of the 19th century" and "List of organisms named after famous people born in the 20th and 21st centuries" (Greta Thunberg was born in 2003) seem too long and wordy. Does anyone have any ideas on how to sort this out? El monty (talk) 12:26, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
I've thought about it a bit more and looked at other split pages, and now I'm thinking it could be something like: "List of organisms named after famous people (born until 1900)" and "List of organisms named after famous people (born 1901-present)". Feedback welcome. El monty (talk) 12:30, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
I keep looking and I'm also seeing a number of split articles that use the popular perception of centuries, i.e. 00-99. So now I'm leaning towards using this form: "born before 1900" - "born 1900-present". It may be less strict datewise but it looks more elegant and easy to understand to me. If there are no objections, I will attampt to do the split next week. I hope I can get it right, it will be my first time... El monty (talk) 12:48, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
The split is done. El monty (talk) 09:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
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