In the 17th century, the method of exhaustion led to the rectification by geometrical methods of several transcendental curves: the logarithmic spiral by Evangelista Torricelli in 1645 (some sources say John Wallis in the 1650s), the cycloid by Christopher Wren in 1658, and the catenary by Gottfried Leibniz in 1691.
Ordinary cycloids were studied by Galileo Galilei and Marin Mersenne as early as 1599 but cycloidal curves were first conceived by Ole Rømer in 1674 while studying the best form for gear teeth.
The genus name translates as "true cycloid goby", referring to the scales, while the species epithet is in honor of J. S. Newberry.