Board Thread:The Reference Desk/@comment-188432-20130505035914/@comment-26975268-20130505041753

Sorry; wrote that before Doug86 wrote his response. Should really reload the page while typing.

But, yeah, he's pretty much making the same point as me: the people who named it just that had absolutely no knowledge of anything other than the weird disease and the bodies being found.

I think this is a much clearer case than that of the Sun-Singers of Akhet, Akhaten's being either a planet or a star or the likes. Instead of all the information just being conflicting statements of one person (the Doctor), we have statements from a multitude of people, and the Doctor, having only just heard the term, does not really have any jurisdiction over its meaning, even if you choose to think he implies the Horror to be anything other than the disease.