Talk:List of organisms named after famous people

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Section sizes

Section size for List of organisms named after famous people (4 sections)
Section name	Byte count	Section total
(Top)	2,268	2,268
Lists	324	324
See also	251	251
Notes	306	306
Total	3,149	3,149

Proposed way to split

I think there should be separate lists based on the source of a person’s fame.

This list can be divided into sections accordingly: athletes, musicians, politicians, businesspeople, etc.

For sections long enough to merit its own list page article, that section can simply link to the split page as a “main article” section hatnote. So for example if there’s a “politicians” section, when the reader opens that section, the only thing there is “main article: List of organisms named after politicians”. Whereas if it’s something less common for fame that only has a few famous people such as “law enforcement”, those can simply be listed under that section of this article, without needing its own separate article. Mrbeastmodeallday (talk) 08:39, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think this was discussed, and in principle it sounds like a good idea, but the problem is that you're always going to find people who are difficult to pigeonhole, either because they have done many different things in their life, or because the source of their fame doesn't fit neatly in any category. Is Jennifer Lopez more famous as a singer or as an actress? Was A.P.J. Abdul Kalam more famous as an aerospace scientist or as a politician? Hard to say. Do you put people like them in both categories? (Leading to a lot of repeat entries). And what category would Edward Snowden, Omayra Sánchez or Jyoti Kumari fit into? You could end up having to make a lot of different categories for only one or two people. El monty (talk) 09:00, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if we know that a taxon is named for someone, then presumably we have the rationale statement from the namer, which would specify for which facet's of a person's public life the dedication is warranted. That said, there's probably no good way to break the list up, but clearly there is a need to do so, so date of birth of the referent is okay. Date of naming would be another option, but that would be a lot more work for little benefit. Arlo James Barnes 05:59, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]