Immortality in a Name

Want your name to live after you? You can join Jeff Goodhartz and others who wish to have their name live on by paying to have a new species named after you. Jeff Goodhartz paid $5,000 to have a new-found sea worm given the Goodhartz name, "goodhartzorum".

"This really jazzes me up" says the 55-year-old high school math teacher whose namesake is translucent with a flamboyant blue tuft. "It will be out there, the family name."

Goodhartz bought the naming rights from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography which unveiled its fundraising name-a-species programme this year. http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=894

It's common for discoverers to name a new species after themselves or in honour of their spouses, children, colleagues or benefactors. It is a new practise to sell of the names in order to fund research.

I would love to have a sea creature named after me, maybe a sea cucumber or jelly-fish-some of them are breathtaking. I love to visit the Monterey aquarium and visit the Jelly exhibit. Maybe one day, we will all be watching the Mularium jelly float around the tank. Or I might want to have naming rights for this nudibranc. The possibilities are thought provoking! Just have to decide how much I would like to pay.