Cecil the lion was doomed from the moment he got his name

Give an animal a cute name and its fate is sealed. The act reduces magnificent beasts to toys of humankind - and the next step is often extinction

Cecil the lion? Shot by a Minnesotan dentist with a bow and arrow. Maurius the giraffe? Fed to his fellow inmates in a Copenhagen zoo. Knut the polar bear? Died of stress in front of 600 Berliners. Give an animal a name, and its fate is sealed. If the ultimate sin in biological science is anthropomorphy, we sure are guilty. By naming a wild animal, it is instantly appropriated, and demeaned. It becomes acculturated, part of our human discourse. Cecil's end was in sight as soon as he was christened; he became a target as sure as if someone had drawn a bull's eye on his rump. Gloriously maned he might have been, but he was emasculated by his name, much as Clarence the cross-eyed lion, of the 1960s TV series Daktari, or even the dolorous Parsley the Lion, of The Herbs, were.

Related: Killer of Cecil the lion was dentist from Minnesota, claim Zimbabwe officials