Chresonym

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The term Chresonym is derived from the Greek "chresis" and refers to the "use" of a name. In biodiversity informatics, a chresonym refers to the use of a taxon name, usually a species name, within a publication. The term was coined to distinguish two uses of the term "synonym" as used within the context of taxonomy. Synonyms are more universally defined as different names that refer to the same object or concept. As noted in the referent publication, the term is applied consistently within the various codes of nomenclature that govern the use and creation of organism names. As also noted, "systematists use the term in another sense as well, namely in reference to all occurrences of any name or set of names (usually synonyms) in the literature, or in given segments thereof." In this case, the synonymy may include multiple versions of the same synonym; one for each place the author found it rather than a distinct, summarized list of different synonyms. This not only creates a conceptual problem concerning the term, but can introduce additional ambiguity in how species are referenced.

Species names consist of a genus part and a species part to create a binomial name. Species names often also include a reference to the original publication of the name by including the author and sometimes the year of publication of the name. As an example, the sperm whale, Physeter catodon, was first described by Linnaeus in the 10th edition Systema Naturae published in 1758. Thus, the name may also be referenced as Physeter catodon Linnaeus 1758. That name was also used by Harmer in 1928 to refer to the species in the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of London and of course, it has appeared in numerous other publications since then. Taxonomic catalogues such as The Catalog of Living Whales by Hershkovitz, may reference this usage with a Genus+species+authorship convention that may appear to indicate a new species (a homonym) when in fact it is referencing a particular usage of a species name (a chresonym). Hershkovitz, for examples appears to refer to Physter catodon Harmer 1928. The result can be confusion as this name+author combination really refers to the same name that Linnaeus first published in 1758.

See:
Chresonymy ex Synonymy
Hobart M. Smith and Rozella B. Smith
Systematic Zoology, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Dec., 1972), pp. 445-445
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. for the Society of Systematic Biologists

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