Saying It With Names

Taxonomy is the scientific enterprise both of arranging living organisms into natural groupings, and of according them scientific names. Homo sapiens, for example. Even at this late date in the history of science, taxonomists are still very busy people. Taken together we contribute slightly more than one new species to science every day of the year. Even so, we still have a very long way to go before the last life form has been catalogued. Some estimates put the number of species as yet unnamed in the tens of millions.

The word tithe comes down to us from middle English teothe, which is a contracted form of Old English teogotha, a tenth. As used in times of yore, it referred to that portion of one’s annual production – usually one-tenth of it – that is owed to the church or its clergy. Nowadays it gets used mostly as a synonym – albeit a rare one – for a tax or a levy; one could theoretically speak, for example, of a tithe on carbon.

Think how much good could be done for conservation if even one-tenth of the hundreds of species described each year could be put up for auction for the privilege of naming one of nature’s creations – this in exchange for money ear-marked for a land trust or conservation group of the taxonomist’s choosing.

Such an arrangement would confer at least five advantages: first for the organism being auctioned, which would necessarily be catapulted to public notice; second for the ecosystems supporting the organism, which will likewise be brought into public view; third for the donor scientists, whose work would thereby finally hit political pay dirt; fourth for the conservation community who need all the exposure (and $$) they can possibly get; and fifth for the winning bidder who, besides receiving recognition as a public benefactor, would have his/her name–or that of his child, dog, or corporation–permanently associated with a living creature.