etiquette - Why the taboo against naming discoveries after yourself?

It is often considered a very bad idea to try to name a discovery (a law, phenomenon or an invention) after yourself.

On the other hand, there are many species names which seem to be a bastardized Latin of the discoverer's name. With gene names, I'm not sure, but I've seen many frivolous gene names, such as those inspired by cartoon characters. I wonder if you could get away with naming a gene after yourself if you wanted to.

In other cases, such as names of synthetic strains and plasmids, it is in fact preferable to use the researcher's name. Off the top of my head, I recall GFAJ-1 - the surrounding controversy aside, given all the work she's done, what is so wrong about her wanting to name it after herself?

However, why is this so? Apparently, it can even advance to an extreme where many years after a discovery has become established and associated with Dr. Jones, when he writes a review article on applications of the Jones Effect he will still carefully avoid acknowledging this name.

Isn't it convenient to simply name something after yourself when no clever acronym exists? Isn't doing the work of the discovery enough to earn the right to name a thing? Doesn't the fact that the discovery is important enough to be published automatically imply that it's important enough to be named after oneself?

Answer

In general, the name of a thing should indicate an aspect of it which is very important to the person assigning the name. A person who creates something and names it after themselves implies that they think the most important thing about it is that they created it. That would in turn suggest to anyone who isn't interested in the person who created it would likely not be interested in the thing thus named.

Thus, naming something after oneself is not necessarily a sign of ego, but rather the opposite. If Alex Johnson (made-up name) publishes a paper entitled "Alex Johnson's Laws of Quarkions", the title would suggest that the paper was primarily relevant in relation to Alex Johnson's other work and would have little relevance outside that. If instead the paper had been simply published "Laws of Quarkions", that would have a stronger implication that the author believed laws described therein to be universal, and thus relevant everywhere.

It is only after the importance of something becomes self-evident that the attaching of the creator's name to it really serves to elevate the status of the creator. Until such time, the attachment of the creator's name will tend to deprecate the importance of the thing thus named.