The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals

E

120 Ealey See Tim Ealey. Ebi Ebian Palm Squirrel Epixerus ebii Temminck, 1853 [Alt. Western Palm Squirrel] It is hard to know what or whom Temminck had in mind when he named this squirrel. The type specimen came from what is now Ghana, and there is an Ebi River in that country as well as a town of the same name. Another theory that has been postulated is that the name comes from the Ebo (Igbo) people of southern Nigeria, but the latter area is outside the squirrel ’s distribution. As well as Ghana, the species is found in the Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Echidna Echidna Cuvier, 1797 [now Tachyglossus Illiger] Cuvier must have viewed the Australian Spiny Anteater as something of a monstrosity, to give its genus the name Echidna. This was the name of a mythical female monster, half woman and half serpent. She was also the mother of many other monsters: the Dragon that guarded the Golden Apples of the Hesperides , the Hydra, the Chimaera, the threeheaded dog Cerberus, the Crommyonian Sow, the Caucasus Eagle (which had a daily diet of Prometheus’ liver), the Sphinx, and the Nemean Lion. As an egg-laying mammal, the spiny anteater could perhaps be crudely considered “half mammal and half reptile.” Unfortunately for Cuvier, Johan Reinhold Forster had used the name Echidna twenty years earlier , for a genus of moray eels. Cuvier’s use is therefore only a junior homonym, but the word has survived as an alternative vernacular name for these animals. In 1811 Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger came up with the name Tachyglossus, which is now regarded as the valid replacement name for the genus. Eden Eden’s Whale Balaenoptera edeni Anderson, 1879 [Alt. Pygmy Bryde’s Whale] Sir Ashley Eden (1831–1887) was a British career diplomat. He was appointed as the first civilian Governor of Burma (now Myanmar) under British colonial rule in 1871. He was the third son of Robert John Eden, 3rd Lord Auckland and Bishop of Bath and Wells. He was educated at Rugby, Winchester, and the East India Company’s college at Haileybury, entering the Indian civil service in 1852. In 1855 he gained distinction as assistant to the special commissioner for the suppression of the Santal rising, and in 1860 he was appointed Secretary to the Bengal government with an ex officio seat on the legislative council , a position he held for 11 years. In 1861 he negotiated a treaty with the Raja of Sikkim, which led to his being sent on a similar mission to Bhutan in 1863; but being unaccompanied by any armed force, his demands were rejected and he was forced to come to a highly unfavorable treaty. The result was the repudiation of the treaty by the Indian government and the declaration of war against Bhutan. After Burma, in 1877, he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. In 1878 he returned to England upon his appointment to the council of the Secretary of State for India, E 121 of which he remained a member until his death. The success of his administration of Bengal was attested by the statue erected in his honor at Calcutta after his retirement. It was he who made the type specimen of the whale (which was found stranded on the Burma coast) available for scientific description . The species occurs in coastal waters of the eastern Indian Ocean and western Pacific Ocean. Edith Puerto Rican Nesophontes Nesophontes edithae Anthony, 1916 extinct Edith I. Anthony (dates not found) was married to Dr. Harold E. Anthony (q.v.). The citation reads, “In honor of the author’s wife, Edith I. Anthony, who found the first skull and directed attention to the presence of the animal.” The nesophontes was endemic to Puerto Rico. Other species of these shrewlike insectivores inhabited Cuba and Hispaniola. All are now believed to be extinct, though some certainly survived until the coming of Europeans, as their remains are found in conjunction with those of introduced rat (Rattus) species. Edith Edith’s Leaf-eared Mouse Graomys edithae Thomas, 1919 Thomas is uncharacteristically reticent in his description of this mouse and does not indicate which Edith he is naming the species after. As he uses the genitive, we can assume he had a real person in mind and was not simply making a casual use of a female name in the nominative (see the entry for Eva below for an example of that). This omission on Thomas’ part is highly...