New study by BGC postdoc Doug Booher introduces gender neutral suffix to name species

May 13, 2021
Traditional naming practices when naming new species have generally Latinized personal names using Latin grammatical gender, adding the suffixes -i to identify species named after men and -ae for species after woman. Because Latin grammatical gender does not translate to those who would want to be identified as non-binary, we provide the use of a new suffix ‘they’ in honoring artist and humans rights activist Jeremy Ayers - a close friend of the BGC Jetz Lab member Doug Booher and R.E.M. lyricist Michael Stipe who co-wrote the etymology.
 
Read the background story here and the publication here.