Smallpox, monkeypox, chickenpox, cowpox… How are poxes named? I know that cowpox was first discovered in people who were in contact with cows. Dis chickenpox come from chickens? Did smallpox come from children or Hobbits? Was monkeypox named so because there is a connection to monkeys, or because it came from Africa where monkeys live?
Most of the ones named after animals infect those animals (and unfortunately, crossed over to also infect humans). In the same way, bird flu and swine flu also infect their eponymous animals.
I think that smallpox is so named because the pock-marks it produces are literally smaller than the pock-marks produced by other poxes.
Monkeypox = monkeys
Cowpox = cows
The term “smallpox” was first used in Britain in the early 16th century to distinguish the disease from syphilis, which was then known as the “great pox”
This agrees:
smallpox | Etymology of smallpox by etymonline
Chickenpox seems uncertain:
“(Chickenpox) has been said to be derived from chickpeas, based on resemblance of the vesicles to chickpeas”.
Garbanzopox was too unwieldy to catch on.
“Monkeypox” is on the way out, as the W.H.O. has decided the name promotes regional/ethnic stigmatization. It will get a catchy new name like PV-2778-Alpha.
Monkeypox, smallpox, and Alaskapox are all orthopoxes. The current directive is that animals, geographical features, etc., are out for naming, but that’s OK because today you can construct phylogenetic trees and systematically name all the variants and sub-variants. Numbers, of course, and morphological elements that indicate structural features… I won’t go to the trouble of giving a complete algorithm since I don’t work for the WHO and they would just ignore it
“Black death” is self-explanatory. The infected flesh tuned black.
Sure, but that could be any old black death 
eg bubonic plague is not even caused by a virus, let alone pox
Malaria literally meant that they thought it was caused by bad air, mal = bad/sick
Just saying that the common name of the disease/pathogen may be rather superstitious not factual.
Monkeypox isn’t even endemic in monkeys, they just thought it was when they called it that.
They dont want people hating on / wiping out monkeys to avoid “monkeypox”.
Or saying it meant only Africans, or people who did things to monekys, could be the case zero (first transmission from animal to human. ) or were the ones who were asymptomatic super carriers.
Even the various “-pox” diseases aren’t all caused by viruses of the same family. I was surprised when I first learned this.
Chickenpox is caused by a species of herpes virus. So I had long assumed that smallpox and cowpox were varieties of herpes too. It was only in recent years I learned they are not – the “pox” viruses are a separate family.
I’ve read that the smallpox vaccine is effective in protecting against monkeypox too. So I assume that monkeypox is in the same family as smallpox and cowpox?