Naming policy

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

As many of you are aware, people have spent their lives developing strategies for naming organisms. I would recommend looking at the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature as described in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Code_of_Botanical_Nomenclature

And the original (albeit dated) code:

http://www.bgbm.org/iapt/nomenclature/code/SaintLouis/0000St.Luistitle.htm

The reason scientists use scientific naming conventions is so that all present know that they are talking about the same organisms. I rather like the idea as presented using a common name followed by the binomial but I foresee problems there as well.

What is the problem to be solved, and how generally?

I'm hearing, I believe, a certain amount of concern based on the assumptions:

• There is, for any distinct concept, an authoritative name, which is unique
• There is usually a one-to-one correspondence between authoritative and common name, although there reluctantly may be agreed to be multiple common names
• Both names refer to fundamentally the same thing
• The authoritative name belongs to a single hierarchy
• It may not be useful to refer to even an authoritative name of a hierarchically higher level and assume that to be unique.

Unfortunately, some or all of these are false in a wide range of disciplines. I will observe that computer science often has ways to deal with the complexity, but these often have to do with providing a variety of operators to show relationships

• A person is believed to be unique, but there are many reasons that person can have multiple, sometimes concurrent needs: social customs, as in child versus adult names (Squirt vs. McGeorge; names showing status (Tanaka-san vs. Tanaka-sama), individual versus relationship based (Carol Smith III vs. Umm Wahid), combinations (Petrushka vs. Peter Stepanovich vs. Peter. Bacterial taxonomies change for the same organsm
• Societies change name for social reasons (e.g., marriage, coming of age), but also for political or security reasons. What is the definitive name of he who was born Nguyen Sinh Cung?
• While an infectious disease (e.g., anthrax), has  one pathogen, there are distinctly important presentations (e.g., cutaneous, pneumonic, septicemic). There may be important levels below the specific name, as to whether a given strain of Staphylococcus aureus is penicillin-sensitive or methicillin-resistant or vancomycin-resistant
• Barack Obama is a subset of national leaders, lawyers, people of Kenyan ancestry, basketball players...
• It's a tank! (no, it's an armored fighting vehicle, subcategory infantry fighting vehicle, subcategory M2 Bradley (armored fighting vehicle), subcategory M2-ODS. A tank is an armored fighting vehicle but then has a separate hierarchy -- but is it necessary to know if you are being chased by an M1 Abrams, M1A1, M1A2, or M1A2 SEP ?(sometimes, yes, if you want to know how to kill it).

May I suggest, at least, that we stop trying to put different types of name in the same article, and concentrate more on wikilinks, catalogs/Related articles, redirects, and other things that operationally define relationships among identifiers?

[Joe Quick]

As many of you are aware, people have spent their lives developing strategies for naming organisms. I would recommend looking at the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature as described in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Code_of_Botanical_Nomenclature

And the original (albeit dated) code:

http://www.bgbm.org/iapt/nomenclature/code/SaintLouis/0000St.Luistitle.htm

The reason scientists use scientific naming conventions is so that all present know that they are talking about the same organisms. I rather like the idea as presented using a common name followed by the binomial but I foresee problems there as well.

What is the problem to be solved, and how generally?

I'm hearing, I believe, a certain amount of concern based on the assumptions:

• There is, for any distinct concept, an authoritative name, which is unique
• There is usually a one-to-one correspondence between authoritative and common name, although there reluctantly may be agreed to be multiple common names
• Both names refer to fundamentally the same thing
• The authoritative name belongs to a single hierarchy
• It may not be useful to refer to even an authoritative name of a hierarchically higher level and assume that to be unique.

Unfortunately, some or all of these are false in a wide range of disciplines. I will observe that computer science often has ways to deal with the complexity, but these often have to do with providing a variety of operators to show relationships

• A person is believed to be unique, but there are many reasons that person can have multiple, sometimes concurrent needs: social customs, as in child versus adult names (Squirt vs. McGeorge; names showing status (Tanaka-san vs. Tanaka-sama), individual versus relationship based (Carol Smith III vs. Umm Wahid), combinations (Petrushka vs. Peter Stepanovich vs. Peter. Bacterial taxonomies change for the same organsm
• Societies change name for social reasons (e.g., marriage, coming of age), but also for political or security reasons. What is the definitive name of he who was born Nguyen Sinh Cung?
• While an infectious disease (e.g., anthrax), has  one pathogen, there are distinctly important presentations (e.g., cutaneous, pneumonic, septicemic). There may be important levels below the specific name, as to whether a given strain of Staphylococcus aureus is penicillin-sensitive or methicillin-resistant or vancomycin-resistant
• Barack Obama is a subset of national leaders, lawyers, people of Kenyan ancestry, basketball players...
• It's a tank! (no, it's an armored fighting vehicle, subcategory infantry fighting vehicle, subcategory M2 Bradley (armored fighting vehicle), subcategory M2-ODS. A tank is an armored fighting vehicle but then has a separate hierarchy -- but is it necessary to know if you are being chased by an M1 Abrams, M1A1, M1A2, or M1A2 SEP ?(sometimes, yes, if you want to know how to kill it).

May I suggest, at least, that we stop trying to put different types of name in the same article, and concentrate more on wikilinks, catalogs/Related articles, redirects, and other things that operationally define relationships among identifiers?

Howard, this discussion is about scientific names for taxonomic articles, not general naming policies.  Other disciplines really don't apply.