this letter to the editor of The Auk by the co-founder of the boy scouts Ernest Seton makes a case against eponymous names and against scientists dictating common names more generally — in 1885. seton was problematic himself, but this shows that eponyms weren't a beloved idea, even in back then. 🪶🦉
“There is also another unmeaning custom, which it is still more essential for us to get rid of. I mean that of naming subjects of Nature, after Persons, who have plumed themselves with those childish ideas of their being the first discoverers of such or such things.” - Charles W. Peale, 1799
