Approximately the last minute of this three-minute song linked above repeats the chorus questioning “What’s in a name” and oh it can get stuck in my head. Good thing I like The Shins (it also makes me think of Romeo and Juliet “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet…” but let’s stick with The Shins). Over the past year, I have thought about this song in a different context. In a context, I think quite different than The Shins’ inspiration. In the context of plant names. Not a surprise to friends and family, but for the record, I fall into the nerdy person category. Growing up, I willingly took years of Latin during middle and high school. When I share this with people, they are surprised that I willingly chose to learn Latin. And I LOVE Latin! It is a beautiful language. Even with this love, I was not in love with learning scientific names (which are sometimes also referred to as “Latin names” as they are primarily based in Latin and Greek) for so many plants and animals. Why do I need to memorize all of these names? Well, the first international conference I attended helped me see the value of scientific names. With dozens of countries represented and many different languages, a commonality we had was the trees we all love and work with. The trees may have many different common names specific to the places they grow, but the trees have one scientific name. Pictures from the 2017 3rd IUFRO Restoring Forests Conference in Lund, Sweden. It was a small enough conference that all talks were held in one room with everyone present (upper left), North American scientists trying to identify a Swedish tree outside of the conference building (upper right), and the whole group attended a fieldtrip together visiting forest restoration sites (bottom). Bonus! Scientific names are organized in such a way (i.e., binomial nomenclature) that we can understand relationships just from a name. So even if I didn’t know the specific tree species people were talking about I could think of other trees I know that are in the same genus, that is, related. So why not just use scientific names? Why also have common names? Common names can carry a lot of information too. Common names help us understand more about the tree, the place it grows, and the culture of that place. Since living and working in Hawai‘i, I learned the importance of Indigenous common names. During my Hawai‘i plant identification class, we had to learn three names for every plant: 1. Scientific name 2. Hawaiian common name 3. English common name As I memorized THREE plant names for class, I could hear echoes of students’ laments of students I taught tree identification to a few years ago in the Midwest and their frustration on memorizing TWO names for trees. Payback. All of this to say, names have mana. Names are meaningful and powerful. What names we use are reflective of worldviews. Two papers published in 2020 on this topic that caught my attention are titled “Restoring indigenous names in taxonomy” and “Indigenous plant naming and experimentation reveal a plant–insect relationship in New Zealand forests”. Both papers share how much meaning and insight indigenous names hold. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer shares, “Names are the way we humans build relationship, not only with each other but with the living world. I’m trying to imagine what it would be like going through life not knowing the names of the plants and animals around you. Given who I am and what I do, I can’t know what that’s like, but I think it would be a little scary and disorienting—like being lost in a foreign city where you can’t read the street signs.” She even has an appendix at the end on names! Yet, Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer also warns that when, “And when they [students] put more energy into memorizing Latin names, they spend less time looking at the beings themselves.” Names can be so much more than the name of some historical explorer or scientist (like French circumnavigator Freycinet who has an entire plant genus named after him as well as plant species like Santalum freycinetianum, endemic to Hawai‘i). Or more currently, named for famous people (there is now a dicaprio tree, Uvariopsis dicaprio). So, while I am currently living in a place where plants have Scientific, Hawaiian, and English names, can we choose to use names that are reflective of the place, people, and Indigenous culture? Can we honor different names and officially change names for plants that have names that are reflective of a colonizing culture? For example, naio is an Indigenous Hawaiian tree that has a not nice historical English name (bastard sandalwood or false sandalwood) and a scientific name (Myoporum sandwicense) based upon the Earl of Sandwich (reflective that the Hawaiian Kingdom was known as the Sandwich Islands in the UK). Can naio have a more appropriate and descriptive common English name of sweetwood? And can we change its scientific species name to something more descriptive or reflective of its Hawaiian name, naio (e.g., Myoporum naio)? Naio flowers, naio seedling in the nursery, and naio trees in the foreground of Hualālai, one of the five volcanic mountains comprising Hawaiʻi Island. Photo credits: Vaina Barton, 2021. I am not sure if we can. But, it is an idea. I honestly would not have thought changing plant names was possible until I read an article last July 2021 on changing insect names. The Entomological Society of America announced they are changing the name of the gypsy moth and gypsy ant because insect experts agree the names are inappropriate and offensive. The article reads, “Words matter, and what we call something matters.”
So, what’s in a name? Is a name just a name? Or is a name so much more?
0 Comments
|
AuthorI started this blog as part of my Botany In Action Fellowship through Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens Archives
June 2023
|