A Proposal to Treat Orthographic Variants as Not Validly Published

The question is essentially this: Are orthographic corrections for previously published names to be considered as validly published (though illegitimate) new names? Or are they to be considered as "orthographic errors" and not really new names at all? If they are validly published they may be homonyms of later, legitimate names, and thus prevent the use of such later names. If they have been validly published they may be conserved. If on the other hand they are not validly published, then in effect they are not names, just as nomina nuda are not names in the sense of the Code. They cannot cause the rejection of later homonyms; under present interpretation of the Code they cannot be conserved. There seems to have been nothing in the 1961 Code from which a decisive answer to the above question could be obtained, and nomenclatural opinion on the question has been sharply divided. In the discussion at Edinburgh, as well as in the mail vote that preceded the Congress, opinion was about evenly divided, but proposals to amend the existing Code were rejected. In the opinion of the Rapporteurs, as published in the Synopsis of Proposals (Regn. Veg. 30: 43. 1964), "It is... not certain whether these detailed proposals constitute an improvement over the admittedly somewhat vague present rules".