Kelly Cassidy wrote:

> Many years ago, the USGS decided that no one has possessive
> ownership of lakes, mountains or other geologic features, thus
> it is Mt St. Helens, not Mt St. Helen's, etc. (Or perhaps
> geologists don't type well enough to want to search for the
> apostrophe.) I personally feel the same about species. How
> can Townsend possess so many species? I vote for Townsends
> Warbler.

Being a direct descendent of St. Helen, I feel that my family has been
cheated out of a considerable inheritence by preventing us claiming the rights
to the extensive mineral deposits in the area :-))

Maybe the change of name had something to do with land claims, n'est pas ?


Apart from English names displacing the names that "native" peoples already
had for landscape features etc, (this applies to all peoples all over the
world) I think something is lost when the discoverers name or such ilk is
changed/removed. Having read a couple of books about expeditions, Darwin, for
example, leaving some sort of legacy, ie birds/plant names ( e.g. Banksia) to
be remembered by is kind of neat and conveys an idea of the pioneering nature
of the people involved. Maybe not insprational but it at least makes one
appreciate the sacrifices/hardships that these explorers underwent.

It would be a shame to lose this.

The only bad example of this would be Steller's Sea-lion, Steller's Sea
Eagle. Being named after Steller seems to be the kiss of death for most
species.

Stuart MacKay