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Comment by jiofih | Hacker News Reader

I thought it was understood as courtesy to not name the epidemic after the city, which will forever become a blemish on local tourism?

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My erm… favourite example of naming is: "Syphilis had a variety of names, usually people naming it after an enemy or a country they thought responsible for it. The French called it the ‘Neapolitan disease’, the ‘disease of Naples’ or the ‘Spanish disease’, and later grande verole or grosse verole, the ‘ great pox’, the English and Italians called it the ‘French disease’, the ‘Gallic disease’, the ‘morbus Gallicus’, or the ‘French pox’, the Germans called it the ‘French evil’, the Scottish called it the ‘grandgore‘, the Russians called it the ‘Polish disease’, the Polish and the Persians called it the ‘Turkish disease’, the Turkish called it the ‘Christian disease’, the Tahitians called it the ‘British disease’, in India it was called the ‘Portuguese disease’, in Japan it was called the ‘Chinese pox’, and there are some references to it being called the ‘Persian fire’." — https://jmvh.org/article/syphilis-its-early-history-and-trea...

In Polish it's called "franca" which comes from "French disease". I never heard it referred as "Turkish" and there's 0 google results for "turecka choroba"

I'm fairly sure the name "Wuhan coronavirus" is a colloquial name and the proper name is actually 2019-nCoV. It was first found in 2019, and it is a novel (n) Corona Virus (CoV).

There is not yet a proper name for this virus, thus the proliferation of variations on "2019 novel coronavirus". The WHO subcommittee that names things has promised they will choose a name soon, and that it will not include the term "Wuhan".

> The WHO subcommittee that names things

It sounds like they have a chicken and egg problem if they're still called "The WHO subcommittee that names things"

I went to look up what that subcommittee's name is, and it's probably the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses: https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/23/its-been-sequenced-its-s...

In addition to naming the virus, there is also the resulting disease to be named. It will be named by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). The virus will be named by the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses. [1]

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...

Officially, sure, but unofficially people will remember it like that for some time. In Dutch we have "Mexicaanse Griep" (Mexican Flu) which is H1N1: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexicaanse_griep

In English I think it's more commonly referred to as "swine flu" though.

Swine flu did not originate from swine/pigs though. So the term unfairly and unnecessary alienates pigs and pig farmers. This while "bird flu" is accurate.

It did have a strong component from swine, but also other sources.

Well, they could take a leaf from India and just rename the city? Although, politically motivated in India, it works. Eventually Bombay became Mumbai, Bangalore is Bengaluru, Madras is now Chennai and what was known as Allahabad is now Prayagraj.

It used to be a joke in the UK that after a nuclear incident 'they' would change the name of the facility so that people wouldn't make the connection. I remember hearing this in the context of the Windscale Fire [0], after which the site was referred to as Sellafield. In fact Sellafield is a multi-function nuclear site [0] of which Windscale was just one facility of many.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield

Didn’t India do this specifically for cities whose names have their origins in British colonialism?

That’s a very different context than a virus originating from a particular area.

Yes very different but my point being, the names were changed and over time people do refer to these cities by their "new" names.

Also, in India the colonial reference was the official excuse. In my view, it was purely a show of political power.

Those are the original names of those cities... The British Raj changed the names when they took control, and the residents of those cities wanted to go back to their original names.

If that were true, the people would have renamed them back 70 years ago when India took back control, just as a symbol of regaining control. They didn't.

Failing that, local culture would refer to those cities by those reticent names somewhere. Local newspapers, pamphlets, propaganda material. No evidence of that.

Apparently the effort to reestablish native Indian community names began in 1947 and has been going on for several decades[0], you're not correct about this.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaming_of_cities_in_India

I don't think about Spanish flu when I think about travel to Spain.

You shouldn't, it didn't originate in Spain.

Even today, experts aren’t certain where the outbreak originated. Some say China, some say the American Midwest, and others suggest France. But one thing’s for certain—it wasn’t Spain.

“Nobody calls it [the Spanish flu],” says Albert Bosch, president of the Spanish Society for Virology. “It just happened to be the place where it was reported, and that’s it.” Arnold says the Spaniards themselves had different names for the virus—sometimes “the French flu” for their historic rival, sometimes “Naples Soldier” after a popular musical—but it was the name in the Times that would stick.

[1] https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-origin-of-the-spa...

And it was only reported there because every other country was at war and censored internal news:

https://www.history.com/news/why-was-it-called-the-spanish-f...

It's been a while.

So much for the forever, then.

Because Hubei Virus isn't specific enough? What about MERS? Blemishes entire Middle East?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_respiratory_syndro...

Too late for Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Corona stock is plummeting, buy the dip!

Marburg comes to mind. First thing I think about when I meet someone from there

What do you think the name sars mean ... Hong Kong or macau?

Both? Since Hong Kong and Macau are the only SARs at the moment.

I thought it was coronavirus already?

Coronavirus is a class of viruses, of which this is a single "specie".

The singular of species is species, not specie. The only person who gets a pass on that is Vincent Price during his monologue at the beginning of the Alice Cooper song "Black Widow", and that's only because he's Vincent Price.

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