Kottelat, 2010
Claea, a new replacement name for Oreias Sauvage, 1874 (Teleostei: Nemacheilidae)The name Oreias was created by Sauvage (1874: 334) for a new genus of loaches from “eastern Tibet”. Its type species is Oreias dabryi Sauvage, 1874: 334, by monotypy. Oreias Sauvage is a junior homonym of Oreias Kaup, 1829: 177, 193 in Aves, and of Oreias Temminck, in Temminck & Laugier, 1838: 108 in Aves.
Therefore a replacement name is needed for Oreias Sauvage.
There is presently no junior synonym of Oreias Sauvage, 1874 and I establish here Claea as new replacement name.
Sauvage did not explain the etymology of the name Oreias, but it is the ancient Greek word meaning an Oreiad, a nymph of the mountain. Nymphs were minor goddesses of nature, each associated to a specific mountain. To continue Sauvage’s idea, I use the name of one of these Oreiads as replacement name. Claea (Κλαια) is the Oreiad nymph of a sacred cave on Mount Kalathion in Messenia. I choose Claea because the names of almost all others Oreiads have already been used as genus names. The grammatical gender is feminine.
I thank Antoinette Kottelat-Kloetzli for her help in proposing this and many other names and Ralf Britz for checking the availability of Oreias in Kaup (1829).
Maurice Kottelat
Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 384, 2010