 "Monoculus", the name of the newsletter, is Latin for "one-eyed" and refers to a shared feature of many members of subclass Copepoda.In 1979, copepodologist Dov Por wrote a letter to the meiofauna newsletter "Psammonalia" suggesting the creation of both a symposium and a newsletter dedicated exclusively to the discussion of the Copepoda.There was a small response to this initiative, which increased when the suggestion was repeated in "Crustaceana", a publication dedicated to crustaceans.