Taxonomy
The name of the bird commemorates Joan Gideon Loten, the Dutch governor to Sri Lanka (Ceylon) who commissioned the artist Pieter Cornelis de Bevere to illustrate the natural history of the region from living and collected specimens. The plates by de Bevere included illustrations of many bird species and when Loten went back to England, he loaned these to various naturalists including George Edwards (1694–1773) who used them his Gleanings of Natural History. Carolus Linnaeus described this species under the genus Certhia based on material obtained from Loten.
... described by Linnaeus in the Syst. Naturae, from specimens sent to him by General Loten, Governor of Ceylon, and named in honour of that gentleman, "Habitat in Zeylona. J. G. Loten p. m. Gubernat. Zeylon. qui hortum Botanicum primus in India condidit et tot raris avibus me aliosque dotavit."
— Sir William Jardine
Gmelin confused the species with African species and many publications of that time include inaccurate information:
Certhia Lotenia, or Loten's creeper, is a native of Ceylon and Madagascar. It builds its nest of the down of plants, and is subjected to the hostility of a spider in those countries, nearly as large as itself, which pursues it with extreme ardour, and delights in sucking the blood of its young.
— Nicholsons British Encyclopedia, 1819
Read more about this topic: Loten's Sunbird