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What's in a Name?

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What's in a Name? millennium essay What’s in a name? Linnaeus’ marginal jottings created order out of botanical chaos. mended it to botanists and gardeners alike, Sandra Knapp and by the time he died in 1778 binary amenting her love for the ‘wrong’ nomenclature was firmly established. man, Juliet muses, “What’s in a name? Nomenclature is often dismissed as the L that which we call a rose By any other arcane, sterile province of academic taxono- name would smell as sweet”. She asserts that mists. But without a name, we find it impos- Romeo’s ‘essence’, his goodness, desirability sible to communicate about even common and character, transcends his name. An objects — witness the confusion caused by Elizabethan botanist in the audience at the an English child asking for a rubber in a US Globe theatre might have agreed, not classroom. Biological nomenclature as we MUSEUM, LONDON HISTORY NATURAL because he (and he surely would have been know it today began with Linnaeus. Our a man) believed names were of no con- ability to call a rose, not by any name, but by a sequence, but because he too would have precise name such as Rosa canina or Rosa relied on defining the essence of things. multiflora, allows us to communicate in a Humans have invented many different common language. By referring to speci- systems of naming. Throughout the Dark mens or drawings, Linnaeus tried to link the Ages in Europe, monks copied and re-copied name with a real object. The type method, the treatises of the Greek natural philoso- devised as a way to control the application of phers, keeping their naming systems alive. names in the early part of the twentieth cen- Aristotelian logic, a force in the natural sci- tury, further refined this link. By linking a ences until the mid-nineteenth century, name with a single specimen, which can be required that names reflect hidden reality or examined again and again, biology becomes essence. A name thus consisted of a generic a repeatable science. Scientific names, the part (character naturalis), the essence of the genus and species, provide reference points organism, and a specific part (differentia), in biological space to which we may compare distinguishing it from all others in the genus. Botanical pornography? Georg Ehret’s drawing future discoveries and information. Names were usually Latin phrases, poly- of the Linnaean ‘sexual system’ of plants. But although names imply an underlying nomials, but could be a single word. Consis- order, it is folly to equate them with ‘biologi- tency was not the order of the day. a complete catalogue of all known plants but cal reality’. Our concept of how organisms are Revolution arrived in the eighteenth cen- in it Linnaeus used for the first time his trivial related differs radically from that of Linnaeus tury in the shape of Carl Linnaeus, who has names as marginal notes — not to replace or that of Charles Darwin, and is improving been called many things — the first ecologist, ‘proper’ names, but as a way of allowing all the time. Concepts of what a species actu- a botanical pornographer and a “compleat botanists to mentally organize the ever- ally is are also changing as knowledge increas- naturalist”. It was said, “God created; Lin- increasing diversity. Thus, the tomato had a es — not only knowledge as to the extent of naeus arranged”, and the man himself was botanical name of “SOLANUM caule inerme diversity, but also that of the genetic structure certainly not reticent about his own abilities. herbaceo, foliis pinnatis incisis, racemis sim- inherent in all living things. So names change, The task he undertook was to catalogue all plicibus” (SOLANUM with a smooth herba- but rather than being irritated that the life. Being a medical doctor and a botanist, he ceous stem, incised pinnate leaves and a sim- tomato is now known as Solanum lyco- naturally concentrated on plants. ple inflorescence), which was equated with persicumrather than Lycopersicon esculentum As Europeans began to explore the rest of earlier botanists’ names — Bauhin’s 1620 (interesting that Linnaeus got it right, at least the world, they brought back organisms “Solanum pomiferum, fructu rotundo striato according to today’s experts), we should from far-away lands — especially plants, molli” (apple-like solanum with a round, reflect on the fact that an advance in knowl- which could be grown easily in the gardens smooth, striped fruit) and Mattioli’s 1586 edge underpins the change. Nomenclature and hothouses of rich patrons of science. The “Poma amoris” (apple of love). For conve- comprises more than just species and genus sheer diversity may not be so remarkable to nience, in the margin of the text, Linnaeus names, however, and debate rages as to how us today — Linnaeus’ catalogue of the gave the tomato, in the genus SOLANUM, biologists should reflect hierarchy and classi- world’s flora comes to only about 9,000 taxa the trivial name of “lycopersicum”. Despite fication in their naming systems. — but it severely strained the polynomial an initially cold reception from the learned, By inventing a simple, concise method of system of naming. To differentiate one or the simplicity of Linnaeus’ system recom- naming organisms by genus and species, two similar things is easy, but when the num- Linnaeus revolutionized biology. How much bers increase, names become cumbersome more useful to know that the creature from and impossible to memorize. whom we obtain DNA sequence is Drosophi- Linnaeus, for whom brevity was an ideal y linking a la melanogaster — comparable to other such — “for beauty and perfection science name with flies, its identity verifiable and our results requires conciseness and brevity” — invent- B repeatable — rather than one of Jorge Luis ed a system of nomina trivialia, trivial names, a single specimen, Borges’s creatures “that from a long way off to run in parallel with the phrase-names look like flies”. I required by Aristotelian logic. His greatest biology becomes a Sandra Knapp is in the Department of Botany, botanical work, Species Plantarum, was pub- repeatable science. Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London lished in 1753, after 20 years of labour. It was SW7 5BD, UK. © 2000 Macmillan Magazines Ltd NATURE | VOL 408 | 2 NOVEMBER 2000 | www.nature.com 33.
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