Author Citation (zoology) - Spelling of The Name of The Author

Spelling of The Name of The Author

In a strict application of the Code the taxon name author string components "genus", "species" and "year" can only have one combination of characters. The major problem in zoology for consistent spellings of names is the author. The Code gives neither a guide nor a detailed recommendation.

Unlike in botany, it is not recommended to abbreviate the name of the author in zoology. If a name was established by more than three authors, only the first author should be given, followed by the term "et al." (and others).

There are no approved standards for spellings of authors in zoology, and unlike in botany no one has ever proposed such standards for zoological authors.

It is generally accepted that the name of the author shall be given in the nominative singluar case if originally given in a different case, and that the name of the author should be spelled in Latin script. There are no commonly accepted conventions how to transcribe names of authors if given in non-Latin script.

It is also widely accepted that names of authors must be spelled with diacritic marks, ligatures, spaces and punctuation marks. The first letter is normally spelled in upper-case, however initial capitalization and usage of accessory terms can be inconsistent (e.g. de Wilde/De Wilde, d'Orbigny/D'Orbigny, Saedeleer/De Saedeleer, etc.). Co-authors are separated by commas, the last co-author should be separated by "&". In Chinese and Korean names only the surname is generally cited.

Examples:

• Pipadentalium Yoo, 1988 (Scaphopoda)
• Sinentomon Yin, 1965 (Protura)
• Belbolla huanghaiensis Huang & Zhang, 2005 (Nematoda)

Apart from these, there are no commonly accepted conventions. The author can either be spelled following a self-made standard (Linnaeus 1758, Linnaeus 1766), or as given in the original source which implies that names of persons are not always spelled consistently (Linnæus 1758, Linné 1766), or we are dealing with composed data sets without any consistent standard.