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The internationally accepted naming convention for influenza viruses, accepted by the WHO and followed by the (US) CDC, literally includes geographic origin in the naming of influenza viruses: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/viruses/types.htm https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2395936/pdf/bul...

The WHO's recommended name for the virus that involved in its previous announced pandemic is "A(H1N1)pdm09", which literally stands for "pandemic disease Mexico 2009": https://www.who.int/influenza/gisrs_laboratory/terminology_a...

The name of this virus with respect to the naming convention mentioned above is literally "A/California/7/2009(H1N1)pdm", which you'll note has two specific places in it, one abbreviated and one not.

The world health organization changed its guidelines in 2015:

https://www.who.int/topics/infectious_diseases/naming-new-di...

Of course older diseases would not likely have their names changed.

The WHO itself posts recommendations for the composition of influenza vaccines: https://www.fludb.org/brc/vaccineRecommend.spg?decorator=inf...

For the Northern Hemisphere this flu season they recommend strains like A/Brisbane/02/2018(H1N1), A/Kansas/14/2017(H3N2), B/Colorado/06/2017, and B/Phuket/3073/2013.

Those are virus strain identifier names, not disease common names. IN that case the disease is called influenza.

The WHO advice applies to the common usage:

As these best practices only apply to disease names for common usage, they also do not affect the work of existing international authoritative bodies responsible for scientific taxonomy and nomenclature of microorganisms.

https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2015/naming-new-d...

You are referring to a much different subject than the parent I was responding to, which was about the renaming to COVID-19.

What about the West Nile Virus, Zika virus, Spanish flu, etc.?

Ebola would be one exception, as it is a river. But Spanish flu was not so named (if that's even a formal name) because of anything Spanish in origin; it was named that way because Spain was the only country reporting on it due to suppression of journalists around the world, including in the U.S., due to WWI. People got all their news on the flu from Spain, so it came to be called the Spanish flu.

Totally, and also it is very important. In some Turkish-speaking forums I follow, some people already blame the "Chinese way of living" for such a disaster. This disassociation has been even too late, I'd say.

Covid-19 virus originated in Wuhan "wet market", where freshly-slaughtered wild meat is preferred. It's a perfect setting to facilitate virus movement from animal to animal and from animal to human.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/25/coronavi...

And it happened before, with SARS in 2003:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...

Even if it is so, Chinese way of living is not just that market and people are just being racist. If there is a specific thing wrong with that environment (I'm not the one to tell), it needs to be dealt as a single case, not by talking down the way of living of billions.

Just in one single section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norovirus#Classification we find Norwalk virus (its original namesake), Southampton virus, Bristol virus, Lordsdale virus, Toronto virus, Mexico virus, Hawaii virus, Snow Mountain virus, US95/96-US strain, and Farmington Hills virus.

The world health organization changed its guidelines in 2015:

https://www.who.int/topics/infectious_diseases/naming-new-di...

Of course older diseases would not likely have their names changed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mengla_virus (2019) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombali_ebolavirus (2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klosneuvirus (2017) Brazilian Marseillevirus https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26978387 (2016) Port-Miou virus https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4661300/ (2015)

None of these are common-usage disease names, which the WHO advice applies to:

As these best practices only apply to disease names for common usage, they also do not affect the work of existing international authoritative bodies responsible for scientific taxonomy and nomenclature of microorganisms.

https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2015/naming-new-d...