According to Ken Maclean in a letter to Nature, patients don't like it when clever geneticists name genes after cartoon characters, video game characters, and Monty Python characters (see here if you don't follow). I'm not sure if I can reproduce the letter or if it's under copyright protection (now that I'm working for the man, I don't wanna be breaking no laws), but it's available here. The gist of it is, if you're ill (not like the Beastie Boys, but like dying from cancer), you don't wanna be told that your Pokemon or Sonic hedgehog gene is all fucked up.
Update: Here is some more on gene names inspired by mythology.
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That's right: if you study human genetics, you suck. In relation to Drosophila geneticists, of course. You see, human geneticists are boring. Drosophila geneticists come up with clever names for genes. When the homologues are identified in humans, the names are deemed offensive and inappropriate.…
Don't you think it's twisted that so many kids know what
this creature is, but so few can go about naming the birds in their backyard?
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Every time I mention this developmentally significant molecule, Sonic hedgehog, I get a volley of questions about whether it is really called that, what it does, and why it keeps cropping up in articles about everything from snake fangs to mouse penises to whale fins to worm brains. The time seems…
Humorless, grouchy patients! If I got seriously sick I'd love to have a funny side to my disease. At least without the human version of hairy I would not even have been born...
If only I was over-expressing Hunchback instead of sitting at the computer all day...
A little education on how gene names get chosen (as they almost all have interesting stories behind them, at least from the Drosophila world) for anyone who gets alarmed would probably go a long way.