The first authors inconsistently used a variety of endings (–ides, –ites, –ida, –i, –ide, etc.) for suprageneric divisions at various levels. The first family-group names based on the stem of their type genus appeared in zoological literature in the early 19th Century (see Sabrosky 1999). Rules about how to treat family-group names, as determined by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, have been an integral part of zoological nomenclature since the early 1900s (for a historical review of family-group names refer to Bock 1994).
Akin to other scientific names such as species- and genus-group names, family-group names are extremely important in the exchange of information about the world we live in. The accurate use of scientific names in zoology is necessary to minimize nomenclatural instability and allow the maximal retrieval of scientific information from the ever increasing body of literature. Zoological nomenclature affects the work of all zoologists, yet only a minuscule fraction of one percent of zoologists deal directly with problems associated with scientific names of animals ( Bock 1994).
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