It all started with a crossword puzzle that my husband was completing. One of the answers made him google a certain phenomenon where an animal's genus and species (and sometimes also their subspecies) are the same words, so their scientific name sounds funny, like "Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla." This phenomenon has a name-- it is a binomial (or trinomial) tautonym.
Binomial: two-part
Trinomial: three-part
Tautonym: scientific name in which the same word is used for both genus and species (and sometimes also the subspecies)
Wikipedia has a delightful list of all binomial and trinomial tautonyms (these occur just in the zoological world, so mammals, fish, reptiles, birds, etc etc, but not plants). From there, I ended up on a "list of people with reduplicated names" (like Yo-Yo Ma), then a "list of tautological place names" (like River River River or Desert Desert) where I learned about tautological hydronyms.
Tautological: repetitive (you may also know the other meaning of tautology/tautological as a statement of logic or "any proposition which is true because of its logical form" such as "If p and q then p" or "If the box is small and red, then it is small")
Hydronym: a type of toponym that designates a proper name of a body of water.
Toponym: the name of a place
Somehow then a Google search for "pop culture tautonym" landed me on a scientific journal article titled "Taxonomic etymology – in search of inspiration" which provided many examples of the scientific names of animals named after mythology, legends, classic literature, fictional and nonfictional pop-culture characters (e.g., music, movies or cartoons), science, politics, and famous people, which of course also has a name: "eponymous taxon".
Eponymous: named after something or someone
Taxon (plural taxa): a unit of biological classification, arranged in a hierarchy from kingdom to subspecies (I grew up learning the acronym for taxa as: Kings Play Cards On Fat Green Stools to memorize Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species, though it turns out there are many more taxa than those).
I then Google searched for things like "taxonomy from fiction" and stumbled upon several delightful articles including "11 Plants and Animals Scientifically Named After Fictional Characters" and "Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature".
Nomenclature: the devising or choosing of names for things
Eventually I ended up on a delightful "list of organisms named after famous people". I now have SO much material for Jeo-Party! The best part is, this Thursday is Earth Day, and my friends requested more science questions (as opposed to pop culture questions), so I will be able to deliver a thematic Earth Day Jeo-Party this week, with all these delightful tautonyms and eponymous taxa. (But the best best part is I'll still be asking pop culture questions, like names of actors, musicians, TV shows, etc but under the guise of animals/science!! hahahahah!!).
I very much delight in all the new vocabulary words I stumbled upon, and the many categories of Jeo-Party it inspired, in perfect time for Earth Day! I delight in words and being a nerd 😀
With delight,
♥Jamie
PS: Another delightful thing: I got my second COVID vaccine shot. So far, only a sore arm and a little lethargy as side effects!! Fingers cross that will be it!
PPS: Speaking of nomenclature, we have come up with a name for one of our baby chicks. She is the most curious and feisty baby, and I jokingly called her salty (which is funny because we also have a chicken named Pepper). My husband, inspired, came up with this name for her: Saltina! A play on Salty, Saltines, and Tina (Tina Weymouth is my favorite bass player!). He is most definitely a Master Nomenclature-ist.
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