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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC AND EVOLUTIONARY MICROBIOLOGY logo

Volume 74, Issue 1

Formation of prokaryote names from personal names: a review of current practice and a proposal to emend Appendix 9 of the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes Open Access

Abstract

The practice of naming elements from the natural world after notable individuals stretches back to ancient times. This practice of creating eponyms—terms derived from personal names—has been carried forward into prokaryotic nomenclature, where the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes (ICNP) sets guidelines for creating scientific names from personal names. However, these guidelines can be seen as culturally biased, disjointed and, on occasion, misguided. Here, with the goal of modernizing these recommendations to render them more user-friendly, coherent and inclusive, I review current practice in the light of precedents and key linguistic and cultural principles, while questioning the applicability of the first-name/last-name paradigm for many cultural traditions. Procedural challenges include romanization of the personal name (including handling of diacritics), creation of a short and agreeable latinized stem, assignment of the stem to a declension and addition of suffixes or compound word components to create genus names or species epithets, customizing the approach for names and stems that end in a vowel. I review the pros and cons of stem augmentation, which involves addition of an extra ‘i’ to the original stem. Next, I formulate a coherent workflow, which I incorporate into a Python script to enable computer-based automation of name creation. Rather than following the ICNP in limiting discussion to a few dozen mainly European names, I examine how these principles work out when applied to the tens of thousands of last names under which scientists publish in the PubMed database, focusing on edge cases where conventional approaches fail, particularly very short and very long names. Drawing on these explorations and analyses, I propose emendations to the advice currently presented in the ICNP to usher in a modern, consistent, pragmatic and globally inclusive approach to the creation of prokaryotic eponyms.

  • Received:
  • Accepted:
  • Published Online:
Keyword(s): eponyms , latinization , personal names , prokaryotic nomenclature , romanization and taxonomic nomenclature
Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Medical Research Council (Award MR/T030062/1)
    • Principle Award Recipient: MarkJ. Pallen
© 2024 The Authors
  • This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
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2024-05-03
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