The latest dispute among scientists: Should we change animals' scientific names to reflect societal norms? Or is that giving in to cancel culture?
The names of Hitler, Mussolini, Trump and the three government leaders are still part of the creatures’ formal taxonomies, as are those of fauna named after the colonialist Cecil Rhodes and George Hibbert, a British slaver and plantation owner who also happened to be a scientific amateur and collector.
On the face of it, the issue seems simple. “There should be a mechanism in the zoological Code...to allow for replacement names for biological species that have been named after tyrants, dictators, colonialists and slave traders,” a group of anthropologists, paleontologists and botanistsThe controversy has arisen in part because there are few rules governing the naming of newly-discovered species.
But there are few consistent standards for the species name. The Cornell entomologists who christened the slime mold beetles named other new species after after their wives, Pocahontas, Darth Vader, and the locations where the creatures were first seen. But no universally accepted system exists for reconsidering names that have taken on distasteful connotations.
Botanists have been amenable to renaming species that carry the names of discredited and discreditable individuals; a vote on changes to the naming code is scheduled for a botanical congress next summer. Also at issue for the botanists are a wide variety of plants with scientific names based on an Arabic term for “infidel” that has become a racist slur so noxious that it is treated as hate speech in South Africa and referred to as the “K-word.
The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, which oversees the taxonomy of animal species, has drawn a line in the sand, however. The commission has rejected the very idea of “replacing accepted scientific names because of perceived offensiveness,”Subjecting species names to cultural fashions would undermine the stability in scientific naming, the commissioners stated.
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