It is perhaps surprising that long before this some botanical authorities or institutions would not have endeavored to create a record of exactly who every taxon commemorating a specific individual was named for. It seems to me that this should be a part of the public record for every so-named taxon, but it isn't. In many cases, one has to go back to the original publication, often one or two hundred years old, usually in a language that is not English, and housed in some library far away, and even then the plant name authors don't always say who they intended to honor. In some cases there are several people with the same last name, and it is not always easy to determine which one is correct. A certain amount of guesswork was involved in some of these entries, and I have tried to indicate where there is uncertainty. When a taxon has a person's name attached as a specific epithet and there is a specimen record of that taxon being collected by a person with the same name, I have made the assumption that this is the derivation of the epithet. This may not in every case be valid.

Southern Africa includes South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho, but most of these taxa are present in South Africa proper. Not all entries have been identified as to source, but some that are are from Umberto Quattrocchi's excellent 4-volume work CRC World Dictionary of Plant Names and his CRC World Dictionary of Grasses, for which I thank him greatly, Clifford and Bostock's amazingly complete Etymological Dictionary of Grasses, the PlantzAfrica website, and from Elsa Pooley's guides Mountain Flowers and Wildflowers of Kwa-Zulu Natal. I also want to express my very great appreciation and gratitude to David Hollombe who has applied the same expertise that has improved my California Plant Names website to this one. His ability to track down obscure names is in my opinion unequalled. Two other people to whom I am deeply indebted are Professor Leonard Newton, the co-author with Urs Eggli of the superb volume Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names (2004), who very kindly took time to go over the names of succulents in this compilation and wrote to me from Kenya with many valuable additions and corrections, and Hugh Clarke, co-author with Deon Kesting of Botanical Names: What Do They Mean (2008), who very graciously corresponded from South Africa with many additional notes and information. Both Mssrs. Newton and Clarke have continued to be sources that I have relied on. An absolutely invaluable source of information is Mary Gunn & Leslie Edward Wastell Codd's classic Botanical Exploration of Southern Africa (1981) and also their "Additional Biographical Notes on Plant Collectors in Southern Africa" (Bothalia 15, 1985). Other useful online sources are the Flora of Zimbabwe and the Swaziland Flora Database websites. Taxonomic information has been drawn largely from the Plants of Southern Africa Checklist website created by the National Botanical Institute and the International Plant Names Index which is a joint project of the Harvard University Herbarium, Kew Gardens, and the Australian National Herbarium. Finally I extend my sincere gratitude to Alice Notten, Interpretation Officer at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town, who has graciously tolerated my requests for information and helped to uncover the derivations of several difficult generic names.

NOTE: The list of epithets that makes up this compilation includes both ones that are current and ones that are no longer current. I feel it is important to remember and honor those individuals who have contributed to southern African flora even if the epithets that honored them have been overtaken by taxonomic changes and relegated to synonymy. There are still many names about which I have no information, and further research may hopefully illuminate some of these questions. It is my hope that knowledgeable readers will weigh in with information that has escaped me. When I finish with the names I am fairly certain of, I will go back and try to do additional work on the questionable ones which are listed here. I do not guarantee the accuracy of the information presented here, although I have done my best to insure it. I am certain that there are mistakes in this etymological compilation, and anyone with any information at all which can supplement or correct that which is presented here is invited to please contact me at mmlcharters[at]calflora.net.