Dear Andrew,
 
thank you best for more information to the Conch-lers.
As my English is not so good, maybe that all friends didn't
understand me, but so your answer was more professional.
Rules have to do with Latin grammar and with the selection
of type material and describing of the most important facts.
What's about our former discussion about music. I have lost
these dates but I think we were it speaking about Brahms,
McDowell and ....sorry at the moment I have a blackout...
the nice pianoworks of .....Louis Moreau Gottschalk.
I have a very intersting CD for you recorded in one of
the concerts in the Tiroler Landesmuseum Innsbruck of
a very famous Tirolean composer. Thuille.
Very very interesting. Please tell me you address - if you
are the music lover from Toscaloosa or which name of this
city always is.
yours sincerly Helmut
 
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>
> As Helmut Nisters says, an author is free to name a species in almost any
> manner that is consistent with the rules of nomenclature. These rules have
> mostly to do with Latin grammar, so a very broad range of names is
> possible. The rest of this message will deal only with matters of taste,
> not rules.
>
> Names for species should be varied and interesting, because one of the most
> important purposes of names is to aid memory. In addition, most names
> should be appropriate, that is, they should indicate an important
> characteristic of the species (form, color, locality, stratigraphic age,
> etc.). With thousands of molluscan species to name and remember, there is
> plenty of room for names that celebrate the collector, a favorite
> professor, a wife, or even a cat. It does seem more appropriate to honor a
> collector (who may feel that this is a fair trade for donating a rare
> specimen to a museum) or a conchologist (whose name is sure to be well
> known to the people who deal with the species) than to honor someone who
> has no connection to the species or even to conchology. In this light, a
> mollusk named for a cat is an anomaly.
>
> The common name for a species in the local language often makes quite a
> good Linnean name.
>
> Insulting names have been given, though editors are supposed to weed these
> out in manuscript. For instance, the vertebrate name Cophater may (or may
> not) be a punning insult (Cope-hater) to E. D. Cope, whose 19th-century
> rivalry with O. C. Marsh is well known in the annals of paleontology. More
> often, insults are unintentional. A trace fossil similar to Glockeria was
> named Subglockeria, for instance, and sub- ("under") is not a very nice
> prefix for a person's name (Glocker). But no insult was intended.
>
> People who give their own name to species are scorned or laughed at, like a
> soldier who wears medals that he didn't earn.
>
> Sometimes a researcher will concoct a new name that sounds well in one
> language, but is obscene in another. This too is usually unintentional, and
> reviewers and editors try to avoid this situation. There are so many
> languages that almost anything is probably offensive in one or another.
>
> Names should be euphonious (sound well). Names that are very difficult to
> pronounce in Latin or Greek are usually not advisable. A classic example of
> this is Parapecten ntlakapamuxanus, which is easy to pronounce in the
> languages of the Pacific Northwest of North America, but difficult for most
> people elsewhere in the world. One suspects that the author enjoyed playing
> this little joke on the entire community of zoologists.
>
> Names should also be short.
>
> Most people enjoy the occasional taxonomic joke. Jokes are memorable and
> add variety to nomenclature. However, just as a humorist on the stage
> benefits from having a "straight man" who seems to lack a sense of humor,
> taxonomic jokes are most amusing when set in a serious background. Also,
> jokes must surprise in order to be funny, so each joke must be different.
>  Puns are common. Finally, one must consider the difference between humor
> based on current events (which may not be funny next year) and humor that
> lasts well. Today's joke can be merely tiresome next year, loathsome in
> five years, and impossibly obscure in a century. I have to admit, a genus
> named for a bad cat is pretty funny! But a whole series of mollusk names
> honoring dead cats would be merely bizarre in a hundred years.
>
> So, to sum up, new names should be short, sweet, apt, and catchy, with just
> enough exceptions to make it interesting.
>
> Andrew K. Rindsberg
> Geological Survey of Alabama
>