Don't despair, Paul; your instincts are correct. The names that sound suspicious may not have literal sexual meanings, but many of them were probably intended as puns. A possible example from the world of trace fossils is Bergaueria, the name for a round, stubby, vertical cylindrical burrow. The author, Prantl, wrote that he intended to honor Bergauer, a Czech geologist who was killed by the Nazis. The oral tradition is that Prantl also considered the late Bergauer to be a little putz. Other dubiously named trace fossils include Diplocraterion yoyo (a burrow that went up and down), Taenidium satanassi (named for a place in Italy), and Walcottia devilsdingli (named for a place in Britain). I'm quite sure that the authors of these names chose them carefully from among other, more prosaic alternatives. Then there's Rusophycus impudicus, of which all I can say on Conch-L is that it really was named descriptively. Andrew Andrew K. Rindsberg Geological Survey of Alabama