Updated 11 May 2025
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Agrostichthys Phillipps 1924 etymology not explained, perhaps ágrōstis (Gr. ἄγρωστις), a forage grass, referring to its body shape, “one of the most strikingly attenuate fishes yet known from the ocean depths”; ichthýs (Gr. ἰχθύς), fish

Agrostichthys parkeri (Benham 1904) in memory of Benham’s predecessor, zoologist Thomas Jeffery Parker (1850–1897), University of Otago (New Zealand), who made a “careful study” of the anatomy of Regalecus glesne in 1886

Regalecus Ascanius 1772 regalis (L.), of a king or kingly; –alecus, from halecum, genitive plural of halec (L.), herring or herring-like fish, i.e., “King of the Herrings”; according to folklore, North Sea fishermen associated the appearance of Regalecus with the arrival of great schools of herrings, and they sometimes regarded Regalecus itself as a giant herring

Regalecus glesne Ascanius 1772 Latinization of Glesnaes, a farm at Glesvær, Norway, type locality

Regalecus russelii (Cuvier 1816) in honor of surgeon-herpetologist Patrick Russell (1726–1805), whose 1803 account of an oarfish from India served as the basis for Shaw’s non-Linnaean name (“Russelian Gymnetrus”) in 1803, later given as a binomial by Cuvier (who, unfortunately, continued Shaw’s mistake of misspelling Russell’s name by omitting an “l”)