365Appendix A: Post-Linnaean Ranks
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, phylum is a term first coined by Cuvier,
in Le Regne Animal Cuvier, (1817), to cover his four embranchements, although it
does not occur in that work.^1 The term was either later adopted and made popular
by Ernst Haeckel (1866, XIX) or as Valentine (2004, 8), probably correctly, credits
him, he coined the term. I cannot locate any prior synonymous usage in English or
French, but the term was used in German in 1851 by G. W. Körber as a synonym
for Type (Typus) (Körber 1851, 61), so it was probably around before then; perhaps
Haeckel, an inveterate coiner of terms, independently came up with it.
Family is most probably derived from Adanson’s term (Judd et al. 1999, 40). The
Strickland Code of 1842 (Strickland, 1843, 119) mentions “families,” noting they
ought to be ended in -idea, and this implies families were in common use by that
time. It also allows subfamilies. Mayr and co-authors (1953, 272) give the intro-
duction of “family” to Latrielle in 1796, but do not give any information regarding
phylum.
In botany, phylum was not used until recently, and instead the rank was division,
introduced in Alphonse de Candolle’s 1867 Rules submitted to the Paris meeting that
year of the International Botanical Congress (Candolle 1867).
The present International Code of Zoological Nomenclature does not regulate
higher taxon ranks above superfamily, and so phylum is in effect an informal rank
(Winston 1999, 32). Recent attempts to revise the rank of kingdom and add empire,
or domain (Baldauf et al. 2000, Margulis and Schwartz 1998, Ruggiero et al. 2015,
Syvanen and Kado 1998, Williams and Embley 1996, Woese 1998) are thus legiti-
mated by tradition even if not yet widely accepted.
See Nicolson 1991, Smith 1957, and Weatherby 1949 for the history of botanical
nomenclature. See Linsley and Usinger 1959 and Melville 1995 for the zoological
h ist or y.
Recently, the needs of databases, ironically one of Linnaeus’ own concerns
(Müller-Wille and Charmantier 2012), have led to a regularizing and listing of all
used ranks. The Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) initiative of the
United States government lists the following:^2
(^1) Cuvier called them “great divisions” (grande divisions) in that work. He also referred to them as plans,
models and forms. He introduced the term embranchement (branch) in his 1812 memoir [Cuvier
1812]. He had, however, previously used the term in a common sense, without any rank implied, when
he divided insects into two embranchements in his Lectures in 1805 [Cuvier et al. 1805]. Thanks to
Polly Winsor for the first citation and David Williams for the second.
(^2) Anonymous July 20, 2015.