this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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I thought it was less about racial stereotypes, and more about this big recent push across multiple fields to not have people's names attached to things. Right now (or recently) it's about oviducts v Fallopian tubes or the bulbourethral gland v Cowperis gland in biology, which I'm familiar with. I think there was a post and comment thread about birds specifically in the last few days on Lemmy; same thing with people's names being removed.
From what I've seen, a lot of the motivation to not have peoples' names attached to things is because people have things attached to them (such as racism). Not saying that's every case, but I'm sure that's a significant factor behind the general push.
I fucking bet its really a chance for egotistical people to be able to put a names on things without having to discover new things.
Um. The names aren't being replaced with other personal names, and even if they were, it's certainly not with the names of the people doing the replacement.
I think the point was they aren't necessarily trying to replace names with their own, but they get the privilege to name it whatever they like and the name will be used until the next big wave of renaming things comes along.
Still an odd accusation to me... How does that privilege say anything about ego, given that history probably won't remember the renamers specifically?
It's really dependent on the attitude of the renamers. Maybe they are honored for the privilege and take it seriously, others might think it's their god given right to name things and fuck the old names. That last one may be a bit extreme, and without actually knowing these people, the best option is to just not give a fuck and move on with life.