John Wright

The Naming of the Shrew

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Latin names — frequently unpronounceable, all too often wrong and always a tiny puzzle to unravel — have been annoying the layman since they first became formalised as scientific terms in the eighteenth century.
Why on earth has the entirely land-loving Eastern Mole been named Scalopus aquaticus, or the Oxford Ragwort been called Senecio squalidus — 'dirty old man'? What were naturalists thinking when they called a beetle Agra katewinsletae, a genus of fish Batman, and a Trilobite Han solo? Why is zoology replete with names such as Chloris chloris chloris (the greenfinch), and Gorilla gorilla gorilla (a species of, well gorilla)?
The Naming of the Shrew will unveil these mysteries, exploring the history, celebrating their poetic nature and revealing how naturalists sometimes get things so terribly wrong. With wonderfully witty style and captivating narrative, this book will make you see Latin names in a whole new light.
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328 printed pages
Publication year
2014
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Quotes

  • Беатаhas quoted7 years ago
    Many Latin names are as descriptive as these two, but some are particularly evocative. What better name for the venomous puff adder could there be than Bitis arietans (‘striking, biting thing’) – other than perhaps Lachesis muta, which belongs to the South American bushmaster and means ‘silent fate’? The Canadian porcupine goes by the perfect name of Erethizon dorsatum – ‘having an irritating back’. However, as this book will reveal at length, many scientific names are as useless as Troglodytes troglodytes troglodytes (‘hole burrower hole burrower hole burrower’, the burdensome name of the northern wren) and Puffinus puffinus, which is, of course, the name of the Manx shearwater.
  • Беатаhas quoted7 years ago
    Although similar constructions are familiar in English – ‘black duck’ and ‘wood sorrel’, for example, where ‘duck’ and ‘sorrel’ can be viewed roughly as genera – endless problems would occur in any attempt to formalise them in a taxonomy. Wood sorrel and common sorrel are only very distantly related, while the black duck is in the same genus as the mallard, the garganey, the teal and the wigeon but in a different genus to the tufted duck. These common names are useful in their way, but they fail to tell us anything about the organisms’ relationships with other species, and most would have to be dispensed with in any officially approved list. We would perhaps have the ‘teal duck’, the ‘wigeon duck’ and the ‘tufted scaup’ (to borrow a common name from its close relative), but I have no idea what we could do with the sorrels.
  • Беатаhas quoted7 years ago
    While I don’t mind telling someone that the little mushroom in their hand is called Tubaria furfuracea, I do feel embarrassed when informing them that they have a ‘scurfy twiglet’. There is nothing particularly wrong with these names, but they lack the weight and authority that comes with long usage. Also, I don’t think they really help: if people are having difficulty with names, the last thing they need is a whole new set of them. In my opinion, it is simply not possible to make up common names and expect them to become a useful currency.
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