My only thoughts on this are really, why has this been so long coming. Taxonomic names get revised all the time (and not solely for taxonomic reasons). It’s a little bit shameful this is only just happening now.
Changes are also being considered where things have been named after a person, and that person was involved in the slave trade. I can see this one might meet with more objection because judging anyone from the past by modern standards is likely to result in disappointment, and the biggest problem with that is that (IMO) it tends to encourage high-horsery; deflecting our attention from our own faults, which we could change, by focusing on judging people who are dead and cannot change.
It seems like one of the main threads of concern about this is that it’s change, and that might be confusing, but IMO that’s an imaginary BS complaint. Taxonomic names change all the time when things get reclassified (for example the herb rosemary used to have it’s own genus Rosmarinus, but recently it got lumped into the genus Salvia - presumably for perfectly reasonable reasons, and botanists just have to deal with it).
If you don’t want change, then simply never make mistakes. If you can’t avoid mistakes, deal with change.
There are some odd names out there. The red-headed parrot, or Pionus parrot has red feathers around its cloaca. It was therefore named Pionus menstruus.
All scientific naming should be reviewed. Old names can be preserved for historical purposes, no need for science to care what colloquial names are used for species, but every accepted name should be considered based on its relevant descriptive nature. Nothing wrong with using names of discoverers if accurately applied.
Ah. That’s a point. I know there have been other name changes and think at least one was taxonomic but I might be wrong; no time to hunt up references now.
Cooperative Extension and other such places use colloquial names as well as taxonomic when providing advice to farmers, home gardeners, etc. If they change which colloquial name they’re using, they need to publicize it, or most people aren’t going to know what they’re talking about. And they need to settle on a consistent colloquial name to use, or again nobody’s going to know what they’re talking about.
I see the intent is to rename caffra species to affra or similar, I think something capensis or keiana would be better, more specific to the region, overall.
It’s one of the common names that needs to be discontinued. But there isn’t any particular system or organisation in charge of common names for stuff. That’s just down to people deciding to stop being assholes and stop using the common name that contains a slur.
Except that there seems to be nothing black-colored about the plant. All I know about it is what I read in the Wikipedia article, and it doesn’t explain where the name comes from, but I’m guessing the scientific name is based on the offensive common name.
Nigricans means ‘becoming black’ in latin, I think. The seeds of the plant darken to very dark greyish-black as they ripen. The scientific and some of the common names reflect this property of the plant, including the offensive common name.