What I'm asking is essentially when scientific-naming went off the rails, from being descriptive to today were we have species named for celebrities like Johnny Cash and Beyoncé, in the latter's case a fly with a very prominently enlarged lower-body, refrencing that celebrity's own rather large buttocks.... Did Linnæus or his "apostles" name any species like that? Is it a recent phenomenon?
In 1861, a famous ornithologist named a type of Spanish eagle after Prince Adalbert of Bavaria, who had recently appointed said ornithologist's son as his personal eye doctor.
Multiple sea creatures were named after Albert I of Monaco in the prewar twentieth century and a moth was named after Andrew Carnegie in 1896, both because they patronized the sciences (in the prince's case because he owned the yacht used for the expeditions and in Carnegie's because of his donations of academic institutions and libraries).
There may well be earlier examples that I'm just not familiar with. The point is, people have always named things (animals, plants, celestial bodies, colonies, ships, etc.) after wealthy and famous people to whom they were partial.