It's been a hot topic on the bird forum I follow. As the story goes, the Ornithological Society started to review some of the bird namesakes and discovered purported racists and misogynists. For example, John McCown the Confederate general, or John Townsend (i.e. Townsend's Solitaire and Townsend's Warbler) who stole Native American skulls from graves. There started to be such an accumulation to review and please everyone that they decided to rename them all. The new names will be descriptive of some morphological feature or a region where they are found. McCown's Longspur was renamed, Thick-billed longspur. Some further discussion got into sexists issues. Like the Ruby Crowned Kinglet is named after a feature that only males have. Obviously not all birds are named after people, but there's a lot.
Most of the names were derived from scientists, naturalists, or explorers in the 1800's, and truth be told these were mostly white males for what it's worth.
It's all part of some great renaming. One of our famous 14er's was called Mt. Evans after an early governor who advocated the extermination of Indians. Our state has dozens of creek and mountain names under review. Mt. Evans was just renamed Mount Blue Sky. A local Audubon society was renamed since John Audubon was a slave owner.
If they start getting into insect and mammal names it's going to be a long journey. It can seem like an odd world at times.