Taxacom: A compromise solution (was Re: Single official lists of taxa (sensu Doug Yanega many proposals to this list))

[David Redei]

Francisco wrote, "*I currently do not see that those who argue that gender
agreement should just be maintained in the encrusted system we currently
have, would contribute much to a solution of the problem. They did not 30
years ago, and I would not expect a different result now.*"

I honestly do not even see what the problem is. Adam, George proposed to
abandon gender agreement, and I am aware that they want a change, but I
simply do not see what problem will their proposed change solve. That it is
confusing for the non-zoologist community that there is Bombus lapidarius
and Neobombina lapidaria? Such names will continue to exist, since the
published literature will not go away.

Another issue that from time to time pops up is the broad public. George
wrote: "*Many people who want to keep gender agreement are only doing so
because it is a tradition. They don't seem to care about the users of the
names. Traditions can be bad e.g. headhunting is not a particularly
desirable one!*" First, I get the humour, but I do not find the comparison
of gender agreement and headhunting particularly relevant or tasteful.
Second, this reminds me of children who learn German as foreign language
and complain, "Why do we need to learn that there is 'der Tisch' and 'die
Tür', it is so difficult, can we just call everything 'der'? People who
want to adhere to 'der Tisch' and 'die Tür' are only doing so because it is
a tradition, they don't seem to care about the users of German language,
particularly foreigners whose mother tongue is not German and they need to
learn German with painstaking efforts!" Third, I would not look down upon
the broad public and would not suppose they are unable to understand the
situation. I know many amateur entomologists, all have a good grasp of the
situation; and those people who don't, they usually have zero interest in
scientific names of animals. Why bringing nomenclature down to the level of
those people who have no interest in scientific names of animals at all?

Actually, is there any polling about how widespread is the need in the
zoological community about abandoning gender agreement? Because a handful
of people participate in the discussion, maybe there are one or two dozen
who strongly want abandonment of gender agreement, but there might be a
silent majority of thousands who just do not care and who have no objection
against following the current practice. I surely belong to the latter group.

Similarly to Francisco, I also feel disappointed about this endless debate,
but for another reason. Generations of zoologists had no problem with using
adjectival epithets, and now, in the third decade of the 21st century, we
reached a point when people started to claim that the nomenclature should
be simplified to kindergarten level, because they are unable to learn
albus, alba, album. In an age when you do not even need to stand up from
your chair to open a dictionary, you only need to look up wiktionary
online. In an age when you, when facing an unusual grammatical situation,
do not even need to go to see your colleague next door or write a letter to
an expert and wait a week for his response, you can write an email or
simply post your question on Taxacom and you will get the answer within
minutes. Moreover, Doug Yanega has been proposing (for a long time) that
even Latin dictionaries could be ignored because we can basically compile
something like a special dictionary for zoological names and you can easily
look up any name in that (an excellent suggestion, I am ready to contribute
to that if the project will begin), still there are people who are not
willing to consult even such an online source, but rather want to turn
nomenclature upside down in an aufklärist spirit; and people who find it so
troublesome to contemplate about whether albus, alba or album is
grammatically correct that they are willing to dig themselves through a
major corpus of literature to establish "prevailing usage" instead. Lynn
Raw's proposal to add a letter “-a” to the end of every genus and species
group names, thus have *Homoa sapiensa*, sounds like a caricature to me, a
way of mocking and ridiculing the intellectual laziness of some zoologist
rather than a serious proposal. I feel all this "problem" is extremely
exaggerated. In my opinion the problem does not really exist, but some
people picked it up, and others enthusiastically propose "solutions",
without thinking it over first whether there is really a problem that needs
to be solved.

Then let me make a proposal too. In previous mails some people discussed
very unusual adjectives, where the correct ending was not easy to
establish. Surely such exist, surely they are troublesome. If you want a
remedy, here is my proposal. If you want to propose new names, but you are
not sure how to deal with Latin adjectival epithets, then stay in the safe
realm of "magnus, magna, magnum", "albus, alba, album". I hope it will not
exceed anyone's capacity; wiktionary gives the endings for every common
Latin adjective. We surely will need to deal with unusual names proposed by
other people, certainly -- they are merely a tiny fragment of all the
adjectival epithets, but they do exist. First, if you are not sure if an
unusual name is correct or not, then just assume that it was correctly
proposed by its author, and use it as it was published in its original
spelling. If you suspect that it is incorrect, or you need to transfer it
into a genus of different gender, and you are not sure how to fix it, ask
help from someone who has better knowledge on the topic, either personally,
or on Taxacom, or on the ICZN mailing list. I am sure you will find someone
to help. You can always ask me, I promise I will try to help. After you
clarified the correct ending of the unusual name in concern (maybe with
external help), write a short remark about it in your paper, explain the
usage for other people, then the next generation won't need to deal with it
again. I simply do not feel that all this gender agreement represents such
a big problem, so terribly hampering taxonomic practice, that it
necessitates all this discussion; well over 90% of the names are
self-evident. I believe that the current system, although indeed needs a
certain level of knowledge and familiarity in elementary Latin grammar, is
still by far the best; all other proposals I have seen so far were much
worse, they would generate much more problems than they solve, and many of
them will downgrade naming of animals to a painful caricature. Arguments
like "I do not care, because I anyway do not care what a name means, so
'Der Brandenburger Tor' and 'Die Brandenburges Tor' are both the same for
me, I only need a label to call it somehow" are, in my opinion, ridiculous.
Do not want to change the system for the sake of change, if you cannot
improve it. I do not think that zoologists are people with impaired
abilities and they are not able to learn how to use Bombus albus and Musca
alba.

David Redei