Nomenclature Quotes

“Many who have learned
from Hesiod the countless names
of gods and monsters
never understand
that night and day are one”
― Heraclitus, Fragments

“It's possible to name everything and to destroy the world.”
― Kathy Acker, In Memoriam to Identity

“I speculate over some of the Anglo nomenclature of birds: Wilson's snipe, Forster's tern . . . : What natural images do these names conjure up in our minds? What integrity do we give back to the birds with our labels.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, Pieces of White Shell

“The parts of our bodies we share with another person are called ‘private,’ while the ones we keep entirely to ourselves remain unlabeled; perhaps those are the truly private parts, and the so-called ‘private parts’ should instead be called ‘sharable parts’; English, it seems, delights in contradiction.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“Some of the city legislators, whose concern for appropriate names and the maintenance of the city's landmarks was the principal part of their political life, saw to it that "Doctor Street" was never used in any official capacity. And since they knew that only Southside residents kept it up, they had notices posted in the stores, barbershops, and restaurants in that part of the city saying that the avenue running northerly and southerly from Shore Road fronting the lake to the junction of routes 6 and 2 leading to Pennsylvania, and also running parallel to and between Rutherford Avenue and Broadway, had always been and would always be known as Mains Avenue and not Doctor Street.

It was a genuinely clarifying public notice because it gave Southside residents a way to keep their memories alive and please the city legislators as well. They called it Not Doctor Street, and were inclined to call the charity hospital at its northern end No Mercy Hospital since it was 1931, on the day following Mr. Smith's leap from its cupola, before the first colored expectant mother was allowed to give birth inside its wards and not on its steps.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“Not everyone embraced the [Linnaean] system warmly. Many were disturbed by its tendency toward indelicacy, which was slightly ironic as before Linnaeus the common names of many plants and animals had been heartily vulgar. The dandelion was long popularly known as the “pissabed” because of its supposed diuretic properties, and other names in everyday use included mare’s fart, naked ladies, twitch-ballock, hound’s piss, open arse, and bum-towel. One or two of these earthy appellations may unwittingly survive in English yet. The “maidenhair” in maidenhair moss, for instance, does not refer to the hair on the maiden’s head.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

“Linnaeus’s other striking quality was an abiding — at times, one might say, a feverish — preoccupation with sex. He was particularly struck by the similarity between certain bivalves and the female pudenda. To the parts of one species of clam he gave the names vulva, labia, pubes, anus, and hymen. He grouped plants by the nature of their reproductive organs and endowed them with an arrestingly anthropomorphic amorousness. His descriptions of flowers and their behavior are full of references to “promiscuous intercourse,” “barren concubines,” and “the bridal bed.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

“As with Dalton and the atom, neither Bateson nor Johannsen had any understanding of what a gene was. They could not fathom its material form, its physical or chemical structure, its location within the body or inside the cell, or even its mechanism of action. The word was created to mark a function; it was an abstraction. A gene was defined by what a gene does: it was a carrier of hereditary information. “Language is not only our servant,” Johannsen wrote, “[but] it may also be our master. It is desirable to create new terminology in all cases where new and revised conceptions are being developed. Therefore, I have proposed the word ‘gene.’ The ‘gene’ is nothing but a very applicable little word. It may be useful as an expression for the ‘unit factors’ . . . demonstrated by modern Mendelian researchers.” “The word ‘gene’ is completely free of any hypothesis,” Johannsen remarked. “It expresses only the evident fact that . . . many characteristics of the organism are specified . . . in unique, separate and thereby independent ways.”
― Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History

“They have been talking about me, it's obvious. Their cheeks are plump and pink and shining like they've been eating too much sugar, but actually it's Gossip Glow, the flushed look that comes from throwing another woman under the bus.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“As I grow wiser and more skeptical, I realize that almost everything in nomenclature comes full circle. The question remains whether I can outlast the taxonomists.”
― Michael A. Dirr, Manual of Woody Landscape Plants: Their Identification, Ornamental Characteristics, Culture, Propagation and Uses