Reading Anti-Virus Spamming and the Virus-Naming Mess by Dr. Vesselin Bontchev, I was struck by the fact that there is no common name for each virus.
Virus names, once chosen by anti-virus producers, are difficult to change because the original name is already present in press releases, on the website, and in the virus definition files of anti-virus software.
Because it is unrealistic to expect that a standard agreement can be reached by every anti-virus producer over the name of every single virus in existence, any future-proof naming scheme will need to accommodate multiple names referring to any given virus.
Yet another good use for a decentralized namespace.