Racist plant names will change after historic vote by botanists
nature.com
nature.com
But is the plant name racist in the sense that when they named it, they were picking the slur purposefully? Or does the word simply _sound_ like the slur?
Even the latter can be enough if you consider what it would be like if name had the "N" word - or even something that had the same sound. You would literally be unable to use the plant name out loud. But it would be important for publications covering this to not call it a "racist plant name" as that really depends on how the name was given.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaffir_(racial_term)?useskin=v...
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/542122/origin-of...
Ordinary words in one language can sound like foul words or slurs in another language.
People who can't accept this are not yet adults emotionally.
Funny story: decades ago, I was riding a bus with a friend; we were conversing in a language in which the word fact sounds a lot like fucked, with an unvoiced d. Some old lady was giving us dirty looks. Yes, silly hag, we did not suffer a pointless vowel shift in our language; all the Latin-derived stuff (that also forms the basis of a lot of English) sounds close to the original!
We could have an argument about whether we should even have words that have this kind of “Voldemort” power in our vocabulary, but at present we ascribe a lot of power to these words.
I vote to rename kefir to "that sour drink formerly offensive to muslims".
Without asking J.K. what thinks about it of course. The opinion of the scientists that choose Erythrina caffra instead the much more acceptable "Soylent bland", does not matter anymore.
Hell yeah why not
Were the plants really named after a word for nonbelievers? Or is there a common root for both. For example if it started as a regional term it could have evolved into a slur.
I’m not opposed to the change, I just find it interesting/amusing from a cultural perspective if the euphemism treadmill is now extending to plants.
In the end the goal seems to destroy one of the few things that we still agreed to do collectively as human species. Using an universal way to name the creatures that live in the planet.
The same species will have different Scientific names for suiting the preferences of Chinese, USA, Brazilians or Russians. After all, it isn't "racist" not being able to use the Chinese alphabet on scientific names?
Scientists will be automatically tagged as belonging to ideology or political party by the names that they will choose to enforce.
Countries with republics will try to wipe names honoring the kings of monarchies that patronage the scientific expeditions.
They don't even understand, or even worse don't care, about the precedent that they are setting.
The idea that the whole world would use the same language sounds much worse than the opposite: that different people would act differently.
Every biologist since 1700 agreed to use the Taxonomic rules (or tried, and failed, to improve the system). This collective project is one of our main success as species. Or maybe we should say "it was", that building has eroded a lot in the last 100 years.
That congress is basically the mess what happens where all scientists had been replaced by politicians.
Generally the sensitivities of Americans take precedence. I can think of many examples in many fields (e.g. the word "master" because of its strongest association in the US is with slavery, which is not true everywhere).
Introducing politics in scientific language, is as obnoxious as claiming that is unacceptable that a score contains more white notes than black notes.