in zoology, animal species are given standard "latin" names consisting of two words, the genus name and the species name. typically, the genus name is a noun, and the species name is an adjective. following the rules of latin grammar, adjectives need to agree with nouns with grammatical gender, so if the genus name is a feminine latin noun then all species of that genus are given (in principle) adjectives marked with feminine latin suffixes.
in practice of course, new genus names don't always use actual latin words, so these latin grammatical gender rules need to be grafted onto words that aren't really latin. and this is where one of the weirdest conventions of zoological binomial nomenclature comes in!
how exactly do you determine what the latin grammatical gender of a word is if it isn't a latin word? according to the ICZN, it's simple:
if the word is from greek, use its gender in greek
otherwise, if the word is from a modern european language with grammatical gender that uses the latin alphabet, use the gender in the source language (yes it is that specific)
otherwise, if the name ends with -a it's feminine
otherwise, if the name ends with -um, -u, or -o it's neuter
otherwise, it's masculine
unless of course if the zoologist with naming dibs says explicitly that they think this genus should have an irregular gender.
anyway these rules are fascinating to me. why are they this specific? grammatical gender systems compatible with latin's adjective suffixes are found throughout the entire indo-european language family, so why restrict it to modern european latin-script languages (and greek)? I don't know!
Ignatio Chapela, a forest pathologist at the University of California, Berkeley, was even more adamant that the idea of “species” limits the stories we can tell about kinds. “This binomial system of naming things is kind of quaint, but it is a complete artifact,” he told me. “You define things with two words and they become an archetypal species. In fungi, we have no idea what a species is. No idea. . . . A species is a group of organisms that potentially can exchange genetic material, have sex. That applies to organisms that reproduce sexually. So already in plants, where out of a clone you can have change as time goes by, you have problems with species. . . . You move out of vertebrates to the cnidarians, corals, and worms, and the exchange of DNA, and the way groups are made, are very different from us. . . . You go to fungi or bacteria, and the systems are completely different—completely crazy by our standards. A long-lived clone can all of a sudden go sexual: you can have hybridization in which whole big chunks of chromosomes are brought in; you have polyploidization or duplication of chromosomes, where a completely new thing comes out; you have symbiotization, the capture of, say, a bacterium that allows you to either use the whole bacterium as part of yourself or use parts of that bacterium’s DNA for your own genome. You’ve become something entirely different. Where do you break down the species?”
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins
This is part of a new series I've started, which I'm titling Verbum Agricola. I am a university-trained horticulturist, but I'm also half a Celt. I've never liked Latin. I've always felt wary of it. Pronouncing it in front of anyone else makes me feel insecure (and this is coming out of somebody who enjoys speaking Irish) So this year, I'm taking my professional weakness head-on by illustrating 100 of the most common botanical latin terms as a memory exercise. I'll use a plant for each illustration that has the word in it and personifies the word in a particularly obvious or interesting way.
Got a botanical latin term you'd like to see illustrated? Leave it in the comments.
This week: Acerosus
Meaning: Shaped like a needle
Specimen: Hibberta acerosa
Made this as a gift for a friend who had given into the urge to steal liberate a traffic drum but eventually had to return it back to the wild
i tried my best making up silly scientific names for the genus and species but ah, i dont actually know Latin (elaborations for each under the cut tho)
Basically all of them fit into the genus Conus which i felt was best meaning cone, i couldnt really find a word that translated directly to traffic.
Starting with the top left:
Tall Traffic Cone with Base - Conus leptosoctopedalis
Lepto = thin Octo = Octagon Pedalis = foot
Wide Body Mini Traffic Cone - Conus parvuscandidusaurantius
cedo = step aside/ make way / leave expecto = wait
I had honestly alot of fun "researching" traffic cones and finding the different types out there and while i dont really know latin i think i did a good job transcribing the defining characteristics into a passable binomial nomenclature lol
Originally posted on my website at https://rebeccalexa.com/common-vs-scientific-names-which-is-better/.
I have a confession to make: my memory for scientific names is spotty at best. My brain is like that dog with selective hearing, who will ignore you when you try to get them to come back inside, but practically teleports to the kitchen when you say the word “bacon”. Sometimes I can rattle off binomial nomenclature with nary an error, but it’s all too common for the mental Rolodex in my head to fail to flip to the right card, even when the organism I’m talking about is right in front of me. (It happens with common names, too, so this isn’t just a binary issue of common vs. scientific names, and there’s a good chance that my AuDHD is at least partly to blame.)
“You want the scientific name for African painted dogs? Sure, let me just pull that up for yo–BALL!!!!!!!”
I would probably retain a lot more of at least some group of living beings if I had gotten a degree in biology or botany or some related field, where a lot of your foundational work requires you to not just memorize but use family, genus, and species names on a regular basis. Because my natural history education (outside of my Oregon Naturalist training) has largely been autodidactic, and relied quite a bit on layperson-friendly scientific texts, I didn’t have that pressure on me to constantly spout off formalized Latin. Of course, I have my favorite species–Canis latrans (coyote), Thuja plicata (western red cedar), Lactarius deliciosus (saffron milkcap) easily come to mind. But most of the time I just have to pull out my phone to look up the scientific names of what I’m looking at, even if I’ve done so before.
(Read the rest of the article under the cut.)
Certainly there are people whose professions require them to know those scientific names as well as their own, and the immense amount of time they spend studying their subjects mean they end up remembering both common and scientific names out of sheer familiarity. Moreover, common names vary from language to language, and so binomial nomenclature is a common tongue among scientists around the world studying the same group of organisms.
I’m not in that milieu, of course. Does this hurt my work as a naturalist? Not really. Most of the time I am engaging with the general public, and while there are certainly my fellow nerds who love learning about common vs. scientific names, most of my students, readers, and tour participants are content with the common names of various life forms. I imagine I would have a tougher time in an academic setting where I’m primarily working with people for whom Latin genus and species are (metaphorical) chapter and verse.
That being said, I think that “common vs. scientific names” is an unnecessary dichotomy. Both have their uses, to include in science communication with the general public. Laypeople are more likely to recognize and remember common names in their language because they use words they’ve already encountered. However, scientific names require them to memorize terms in Latin, a dead language that (unlike yours truly) most people did not take for their language requirements in high school. Recognition and retention are going to be tougher in an unfamiliar language, and so common names are generally more user-friendly.
As a naturalist, while common names are easier for me to pull out of my spotty memory, scientific names are crucial for me to understand the relationships among various beings. Knowing two very similar species are in the same genus tells me that they are close cousins, rather than products of convergent evolution. Understanding that there are over 30,000 species within the family Asteraceae means that I’m very often right when I surmise a new-to-me wildflower “just kinda looks like an Asteraceae“. And while I’m not going to bore a casual tour group by spouting a bunch of binomial terms, it is nice to pull one out now and then, especially if pointing out those aforementioned relationships among species.
So really in the end, the common vs. scientific names thing isn’t so much a case of either/or, but both/and. Each has its own strengths and uses, and you’re certainly welcome to make use of both as you see fit. But don’t stress if you can’t remember every scientific name of every living thing you run across. For the everyday naturalist, learn the names of your nature neighbors that make the most sense to you, and are best for connecting to these amazing beings around you.
Did you enjoy this post? Consider preordering my book The Everyday Naturalist, taking one of my online foraging and natural history classes or hiring me for a guided nature tour, or checking out my other articles! You can even buy me a coffee here!
The Doctor was, well, good. That was plain as day; anyone who met them could attest to that. But not everyone who met the Doctor knew the Doctor. The Master knew the Doctor—knew John Smith, knew Theta Sigma, knew the Oncoming Storm, knew Snail and Wormhole and Corporal Jones and Doktor von Wer and every other silly, artificial mask the Doctor chose to put on.
Because, at the end of the day, the Doctor’s ‘goodness’ was really not so plain. They were mean and rough and reckless and violent and self-entitled and egotistical, but so too they were kind and caring and brave and selfless and so very loving. So no, the Master thought, the Doctor was not good. The Doctor, in simplest terms, was human—more human, maybe, than most genuine Homo sapiens.
