The Name Game
By Chuck Louch, PTMSC Docent
The most commonly asked question by visitors to our aquarium is "What is it?" or "What's its name?" Amazingly, people are usually satisfied with a simple identification, seldom asking anything more about the life or habits of the creature in question. This puzzled me for a long time until I read somewhere that simply assigning a name to a thing gives people a sense of power over it. I think there is some truth in this idea which may help explain the human propensity for naming things.
But names can be tricky, for one man's bullhead may be another man's buffalo sculpin, or your sea slug might be my sea lemon nudibranch. Where, then, lies the power of names? The problem is that so-called common names arise in an unregulated, haphazard fashion and so lead to all kinds of confusion and ambiguity. Scientific names, on the other hand, are assigned to plants and animals in a carefully regulated and organized way and so are clear, precise, and refer to the same species wherever you go. Therein lies their power - the power of accurate communication. "But", I hear you say, "scientific names are such a drag. They're essentially meaningless and hard to spell, impossible to pronounce. Who needs them!" Well, let me give you an example of how useful scientific names can be. Once, in the Florida Keys, some of my students were outraged to hear that local people were fishing for dolphins. To them dolphins were sera mammals while to the local people the name referred to a kind of sport fish. The confusion could have been avoided if scientific names had been used and understood, Coryphaena hippurus for the fish and Delphinus delphis for the common dolphin.
Actually, scientific names are interesting, informative, and kind of fun if you don't takes them too seriously. They may, for example, describe salient features of a plant or animal's appearance or say something about its life style. Coryphaena, for instance, is derived from two Greek roots, cory- meaning "helmet" , and -phaen(a) meaning "showy", while hippurus is derived from the Greek word for horse. So the whole name could be translated as "horse with a showy helmet". When you look at the accompanying picture of this fish (Fig. 1) and think off the crest on a Greek helmet of Homer's day you can see the aptness of the name, especially when you consider that this fish is well known as a fast swimmer. Whoever named the common dolphin was quite unimaginative, they just used variations of the Greek word for dolphin which is delphi (this might lead us to wonder if there is any connection in Greek mythology between the dolphin and Apollo one of whose oracles resided at Delphi).
The discoverer of a new species may decide to name it after a famous person, a friend, or a spouse. Thus the grunt sculpin (Fig. 2) is Rhamphocottus richardsoni, where rhampho means "curved beak" and cottus means a kind of fish. This would be Richardson's curve-beaked fish in honor of the Scottish explorer-naturalist, Sir John Richardson. Or an animal may be named for a fancied association with some mythical or semi-mythical figure of the past. An example is Thais emarginata, the rock whelk. Thais was a 4th century B.C. Athenian hetaera who was reputed to be mistress to Alexander the Great. Why a marine snail would be named after a beautiful woman is beyond me. Finally, I must admit that it is almost impossible for me, with my limited understanding of classical languages, to make sense of some names. Why, for instance, should some nudibranchs have the generic name Archidoris which, according to my source is derived from the root archi which referes in Greek to "first, beginning, chief, or ruler"; and doris which may refer to "sacrificial knife" ? It doesn't ease the confusion any to know that in Greek mythology Doris is the wife of the sea god Nereus and the mother of the Nereids. So what was the author of this name thinking of; was it Old Doris?
Some names seem to be purely whimsical. Why, for instance, would someone name the purple hinged rock scallop Hinnites giganteus which means "giant mule"? and what was the author thinking of who named the sun, or plumed, anemone, Metridium senile, which translates to "ancient womb"?
Sometimes, believe it or not, the scientific name translates almost literally into the common one. Consider Ceratostoma foliatum ('leafy hornmouth') where, Cerato = horn, stoma = mouth, and foliatum refers to leafy. Hint, it's a kind of whelk which is frequently found in our aquarium.
But despite these apparent whimsicalities and eccentricities, scientific names can be very informative and helpful. Recently,for instance, I found out why the common guillemot of the North Sea looked so familiar to me. It's official name, Uria aalge, also refers to our common murre. I didn't really have to look up the official name of the great northern diver, Gavia immer, of Britain, to see that it's the same bird as our common loon, but it helped to reinforce my opinion.
The rules of nomenclature are fairly involved and are based on Greek and Latin grammatical rules. Since I doubt if any of us will be naming new species, I will just mention a few basic points. Scientific names are Latinized but may be derived from any language or, as we have seen, from the names of people or places. Most are derived from classical Greek or Latin words. The name for a particular organisms is usually a binomial, consisting of two words. The first is the Genus name which is sort of like a family name since it applies to a group of closely related organisms. The second, the species name, is like a given name and refers to one specific kind of organism. For example, Homo sapiens is us while Homo neanderthalis is our close relative. Sometimes, if a species can be subdivided into a number of populations which differ from each other in small but consistent ways, the populations will be designated as subspecies and the name for each will become a trinomial. A good example of this is provided by the widespread dark eyed junco, Junco hyemilis. The eastern race, which was the first to be described, is named Junco hyemilis hyemilis. Other races are: the Oregon junco, Junco hyemilis oreganus, which is familiar to us here in the West; the grey-headed junco of the Great Basin, Junco hyemilis caniceps; and the white-winged junco of the Black Hills, Junco hyemilis aikeni.
There are several other very important rules that should be mentioned. First is the "Rule of Priority" which states that the first scientific name for an organism that is published (along with an adequate description) in a respectable publication takes priority over all later names. Second, no two genera of plants, or of animals, can have the same name although a genus of plants and a genus of animals may have (although this is discouraged). Third, a species or subspecies name may be used only once in a given genus. And finally, if it is decided to move a particular species into a different genus on the basis of new evidence it will, of course have a new genus name but will retain its species and subspecies names, provided they haven't already been used in this new genus. As you can imagine, these rules have led to much confusion and controversy so don't be surprised if you occasionally find different scientific names for a plant or animal in different publications.
Genus names are always capitalized. Species and subspecies names for animals are never capitalized but they may be for plants if they're derived from proper names. The binomial or trinomial is always italicized in print and underlined in typed or handwritten documents. The name of the author may follow the binomial but is not italicized.
So, you see, the study of scientific names can be fun and even enlightening. It might lead you to new insights into Classical mythology, or elucidate the relationships between different plants and animals, or tell you something about an organism's natural history. I've included the following references for your information.
Illustration: Chuck Louch
References:
Borror, Donald J.: Dictionary of Words, Roots, and Combining Forms. Mayfield Publishing Co. 1960.
Gotshall, Daniel W. and Laurence L. Laurent: Pacific Coast Subtidal Marine Invertebrates. Sea Challengers 1979.
Lamb, Andy and Phil Edgell: Coastal Fishes of the Pacific Northwest. Harbour Publishing 1986.
The Random House Dictionary (Unabridged Edition).