Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature:
Miscellaneous Names

abciximab - "a chimeric mouse-human monoclonal antibody directed against the GP IIb/IIIa receptor"; used during angioplasty to prevent platelets from forming clots. I could find no information on the word's origin, but it is a good bet that "-mab" is short for "monoclonal antibody."

guanine - (one of the 4 bases of DNA) Named after guano (bird excrement), in which it was first found.

MRI - Magnetic Resonance Imaging has become a widespread medical diagnostic technique, but that couldn't happen until the name was changed from Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). "Nuclear" in the name referred to the fact that only the nuclei of certain atoms are affected by the magnets, but it instilled fear of radiation in general public. For chemical analasys, it is still called MRI.

northern blot - (a technique for separating RNA fragments) First, the Southern blot technique was developed, which separates DNA fragments by gel electrophoresis (so, e.g., probes can then identify specific segments). This technique was named after its inventer, E. M. Southern. When an analogous technique was developed for RNA, its name also followed by analogy. There is also a western blot for proteins. No eastern blot yet.

R2D2 (a protein involved in generating siRNA) The Drosophila proteins which generate small interfering RNA (siRNA) from longer RNA are Dicer-2 and a previously unknown protein. The latter, when described, was named R2, because it contains two dsRNA-binding domains, plus D2, for its association with Dicer-2. [Science 301: 1921]

shmoo - (a projection in yeast cells for mating) Named after a creature from the Li'l Abner comic strip, no doubt due to a resemblance in shape.

snottite - "mucous stalactites"; cave formations produced by colonies of sulphurphilic bacteria, composed of elemental sulphur, iron oxide crusts, gypsum, and bacteria. They take the form of gelatinous, dripping microbial draperies and are highly acidic.

thagomizer - One Far Side cartoon (by Gary Larson) shows a caveman pointing to a picture of the spikes at the end of the tail of a Stegosaurus and saying, "Now this end is called the thagomizer ... after the late Thag Simmons." Paleontologists have adopted the name.

ANDi (First genetically modified primate) From "inserted DNA" spelled backwards. The rhesus monkey had a gene for a jellyfish protein inserted in his DNA.

C. C. - (first cloned cat) Short for "copycat".

Ditteaux - first cloned wild carnivore (Felis lybica, an endangered African wildcat). The spelling is an homage to Ditteaux's birthplace, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Dolly - (first cloned sheep) Named after the buxom actress Dolly Parton because the sheep was cloned from mammary cells.

Archelon Weiland, 1896 (Cretaceous turtle) This turtle was 15 feet long, 4500 lbs., possibly the largest chelonian ever. In the 1966 film "One Million Years B.C.," fur-bikini-clad Raquel Welch encounters a stop-motion giant turtle lumbering toward the sea. She alerts her fellow tribesmen by yelling "Archelon!", the animal's true scientific name and the only 'real' word said by any of the movie's cast. All of the rest of the cavepeople's language was completely made up.

Spyro Gyra (an American jazz fusion band) When a club owner asked bandleader Jay Beckenstein for a name to put on a sign, Beckenstein jokingly suggested Spirogyra, a filamentous green alga (a.k.a. pond scum), which he remembered from a biology class. The name was then misspelled Spyro Gyra on the sign.

Subbuteo (a British table soccer game) named after the small bird of prey Falco subbuteo. Peter Adolph, the game's inventer, wanted to call the game "Hobby", which is the bird's common name.

Sylvester the Cat (Warner Brothers cartoon character; Tweety Birds' lisping nemesis) He might be named after the European wildcat Felis sylvestris sylvestris.

1991 Darwin - asteroid.

6542 Jacquescousteau - asteroid named after marine biologist Jacques Cousteau.

James Bond When Ian Fleming was in the Caribbean writing Dr. No, he picked the name for his hero off the bookshelf, from The Birds of the West Indies by James Bond.

8373 Stephengould - asteroid named after Stephen J. Gould.

CATCH22 (chromosome 22q11.2 microdeletion) This name, from "cardiac anomaly, T-cell deficit, clefting and hypocalcaemia," was abandoned due to its no-win connotations. [J. Med. Genet. 36: 737-738 (1999); cited in Nature 439: 266 (2006).]

Chionoecetes oiliqo (Saatuaq crab) In 1993, Greenland issued a 7.25-krone stamp showing a picture of a crab and this scientific name. However, the crab's correct species name is C. opilio; the stamp was printed with a mirror reversal of the specific epithet. A corrected stamp was printed soon after.

Gazella granti roosevelti (Roosevelt's gazelle),

Hippotragus niger rooseveltien (Roosevelt's sable antelope; extremely rare, last legally shot in 1912) On the 21 April 1909, Teddy Roosevelt's safari set off from Mombasa, Kenya. By the time the entourage arrived in Khartoum 8 months later, they had slaughtered 5,013 mammals, 4,453 birds, 2,322 reptiles and amphibians and similar numbers of fish, invertebrates, shells, and plants. The skins, etc. were sent to the Smithsonian; among these were Roosevelt's gazelle and Roosevelt's sable.

hectocotylus Some male cephalopods have a long coiled arm which carries a spermatophore and breaks off inside the female during copulation. When first discovered, it was thought that this arm was a type of parasitic worm, and it was described as such (Delle Chiaje, 1825), complete with drawings of the imagined internal anatomy. The author later admitted his mistake. This name continues to be used today for the modified reproductive arm of male cephalopods.

Kryoryctes cadburyi 2005 (Cretaceous mammal) Tim Rich, leading a dinosaur dig at Dinosaur Cove, Australia, offered a reward of a kilo of chocolate for a particularly good fossil. (The other food on the expedition was terrible.) But evidence of mammals among dinosars in Australia is even rarer. Asked what finding a mammal fossil would merit, Tim answered a cubic meter of chocolate. One of the undescribed bones from that dig, when eventually examined closely, turned out to be from a mammal. Tim was dismayed by the price of a ton of chocolate, but the local Cadbury factory offered to make good on the bet. Since the individual who discovered the bone was by then unknown, the whole team was invited. Making chocolate in a cubic meter piece is impossible, but Cadbury made a cubic meter of cocoa butter and then let the people loose in a room full of chocolate bars. (Kryoryctes means "cold digger", referring to the polar latitude where the creature died 104 million years ago, and the fact that the animal was adapted for digging.)

Leptocephalus "Leptocephalus" is a term originally applied to a group of small, flattened, semitransparent fishes, often with small heads. They were classified as a distinct group, usually in the genus Leptocephalus, until the mid-19th century. Then the idea took hold that leptocephali were larvae of something else. In 1864, Theodore Gill suggested that they were larval eels, and specifically that Leptocephalus morrisii was the young of Conger conger, the conger eel. Other leptocephali raised in an aquarium metamorphosed into eels; Leptocehalus brevirostris became Anguilla anguilla, the freshwater eel.

Lycosa tarentula (European wolf spider) Tarantism was a form of hysteria that appeared in Italy in the 15th-17th centuries and took the form of frenzied dancing. In folk belief, the bite of a spider could only be cured by such dancing. The name derives from the Italian province Taranto, as does the tarantella, a folk dance, and the tarantula, the common name given to the European wolf spider and later to the distantly related large, hairy spiders of the family Theraphosidae.

Lymantria dispar Leopold Trouvelto, looking for a better silkworm (Bombyx mori), looked for a close relative and imported Bombyx dispar into the United States. But it turned out that the moths were not very closely related; B. dispar is classified as Lymantria dispar today. "Lymantria" means "destroyer." Trouvelto's moths, commonly known as gypsy moths, escaped and have been causing untold damage to Eastern forests ever since.

Malania anjouanae Smith, 1953. The second specimen of coelacanth was caught 20 December 1952 off the Comoros Islands. As this specimen had only one dorsal fin, J.L.B. Smith, the describer of the first coelacanth in 1938 (Latimeria), placed it in a new genus Malania. This was in honor of Dr. Daniel Francois Malan, the South African Prime Minister, who sent Smith (accompanied by the S.A. air force) in a military Dakota plane to the Comoros (then a French colony) to retrieve the precious fish. South Africa received fantastic publicity worldwide and great prestige in the scientific world. The French government was outraged and declared an international embargo on the coelacanth. The coelacanth was thought at the time to be an ancestor of tetrapods. This specimen was found by Black African fisherman Ahmed Hussein. Ironically, it was named for a man who was an ardent Creationist and the father of the South African white supremacist policy of apartheid. Dr. Malans' reaction upon seeing his namesake, the most spectacular biological find of the 20th century, was, "Why it's ugly! Is this where we come from?" Malania has since been synonomized with Latimeria; the single dorsal fin has been determined to be the result of an injury that the fish sustained while young.

Mammuthus Brookes, 1828 (mammoth) According to a folk etymology (the word's true origins are obscure), "Mammoth" comes, via Russian, from the Estonian maa (earth) and mutt (mole). There is a widespread belief, principly among the Siberians and Inuit, that the woolly mammoth fossils (including some preserved mostly intact in permafrost) were the remains of gigantic burrowing animals which died upon exposure to sun- or moonlight. This also explained why no one ever saw one alive. Remarkably, this myth is still extant today. Some people immediately destroy the invaluable remains upon discovery, as they are thought to bring bad luck.

Neduba extincta Rentz, 1977 (Antioch Dunes shieldback katydid) In the 1960's, Dave Rentz was revising the Dectininae crickets when he came across a specimen of an apparently new species of the Neduba genus that had lain unidentified in a museums collections since the late 1930's. Its large size, differently shaped pronotum, and other characteristics were unique. Despite several large scale field excursions to California's Antioch Dunes (which have been largely blown and hauled away) it has never again been recorded. Rentz pronounced it gone and named it 'extincta'. (photo) [Rentz, D.C.F., 1977. A new and apparently extinct katydid from Antioch sand dunes, Entomological News 88:241-245.]

Neoceratodus forsteri Krefft, 1870 (Queensland lungfish) The "Burnett Salmon" was well-known as a food fish in the 1800's. Its importance to science was only recognised when the then Australian Museum Director Gerard Krefft saw a specimen being prepared for a friend's dinner. Krefft noticed the strange internal organs including the presence of a single lung. This suggested that the lungfish could be the 'missing link' between fishes and amphibians. Krefft formally named the species after his friend, William Forster, whose dinner it was originally intended for.

Noronhomys vespuccii Carleton & Olson, 1999 (fossil rat). In 1503 the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci, for whom the Americas are named, explored the island of Fernando de Noronha, off the coast of Brazil. In his Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci delle isole nuovamente in quattro suoi viaggi, Vespucci mentions some "very big rats" as living there. Later explorers found no native mammals on the island, and as Vespucci was the first European to reach Fernando de Noronha, they could not have been European rats. In 1973, Carleton and Olson found fossils of a large previously undescribed rodent. They named the species after Vespucci because his Lettera was the only document "suggesting the existence of an indigenous rodent on the island." Vespucci's rat would have been the only native land mammal of the archipelago. Ironically, three exotic European rodents, the roof rat, the house mouse, and the rock cavy, currently thrive on Fernando de Noronha. [Carleton and Olson, 1999. Amerigo Vespucci and the rat of Fernando de Noronha: a new genus and species of Rodentia (Muridae : Sigmodontinae) from a volcanic island off Brazil's continental shelf. American Museum Novitates n 3256: 1-59.]

Phoenicophorium borsigianum Koch 1855 (thief palm). The original plant was stolen from London's Kew Gardens (hence the generic name) and turned up in the private palm-house of amateur horticulturist August Borsig of Berlin. (He owned an ironworks factory and used the heat produced to keep his glasshouses warm.) David L. Jones, in Palms throughout the World (1995) confuses the story by calling Borsig by the name "Lantanier Feuille Borsig"; Lantanier Feuille is actually one of the palm's common names!

Phragmipedium kovachii Atwood, Dalstrom, & Fernandez, 2002 (orchid) Named after James Michael Kovach, who brought the orchid to scientists to identify. But Kovach allegedly imported it from Peru in violation of the Endangered Species Act; as of 12/2003 he is awaiting trial. Taxonomists hope to change the name.

Pithecanthropus Perhaps the only name given to an animal before it was discovered. In the nineteenth century, it was believed that an upright stance evolved in humans before a large brain. With no physical evidence, German evolutionist Ernst Haeckel reconstructed an upright, speechless, small-brained 'missing-link' and dubbed it Pithecanthropus alalus. When Eugene Du bois discovered Java Man in the 1890's, he adopted Haeckel's generic name but he gave it the new specific designation Pithecanthropus erectus. P. erectus is now included under our own genus as Homo erectus.

Sturnella neglecta (Western meadowlark) The specific epithet reflects the fact that the Lewis and Clark expedition overlooked this bird, confusing it with the Eastern meadowlark.

Tillandsia L. (bromeliad) Elias Tilliander was a student of Linnaeus who was once so "harassed by Neptune" on a trip across the Gulf of Bothnia that he returned home by land (a journey of 2000 miles instead of 200) and changed his name to Tillandz, "by land." The plant cannot tolerate a damp climate.

"I don't understand." It is widely held that French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat mistakenly took the Malagasy exclamation "look there" (or words to that effect) for the common name of the indri (a lemur), but Nick Garbutt in "Mammals of Madagascar" (1999) gives "endrina" as one of the species' native names, and he should probably know. Also it has been related that the aye-aye (another Madagascan lemur) was given its name by Sonnerat after he mistook the surprised cries of the villagers for the animal's name, but this is not generally accepted. In a similar vein, the word kangaroo is ubiquitously stated as meaning "I don't understand" (in reply to Captain Cook's "what do you call that?" query about the creature) or as a garbled repitition of the first part of the question ("can you tell me...?"), but in 1901 a Dr. W.E. Roth claimed that the native name around Cookstown, Queensland, was ganguru. With all three of these its probably a case of believe what you want to believe!

Heroina cocaina (cichlid) Heroina Kullander 1996 is an existing genus meant to be the feminine form of Heros (another cichlid genus). The type species was found near Coca, Ecuador, but Kullander resisted the temptation to create this combination.