Of Course You Can Speak Latin...
—Michael Penziner, FRNC Docent and Phenologist
You just didn't know you could. Let us demonstrate. You say the words geranium, trillium, narcissus, zinnia, hibiscus, hydrangea, and the list goes on and on. Yes, those flower names are all Latin or derived from the Latin, and those words indicate the genus of the particular flowers. There might also be English common names, for example the common name for one of the trilliums is Stinking Benjamin (by the way, we haven't a clue who Benjamin is or was or even why he stinks), and the common name for the geranium in English is cranesbill, but hardly anyone knows that. But you get the idea. So, now that you know that you know Latin, let's look at why Latin was used. To avoid the confusion that would be caused if each living thing had a different name in each of the thousands of languages used in this world, it was agreed by the scientific community that there would be just one common language that all scientists would use, and Latin was chosen. For scientific purposes, names were in two parts: broadly speaking, the first one is the genus and describes things which similar individuals have in common with others thereby lumping them together, while the second name is called the specific epithet and distinguishes it from any other in the group which makes it unique, so it is usually a highly descriptive word, perhaps a physical attribute, or where it's found.
Now that we've looked at the serious side of science, understand that even scientists can get tired of doing the same old boring thing when they name a new discovery. Or maybe those sober scientists like a joke every now and then, just to get a good laugh. And so they pick silly names, or rhyming names, and pretend it's Latin. Here's some examples: there's a clam called Abra cadabra; a beetle called Agra vation; a snail called Ba humbugi; a fly called Pieza kake; or how about a wasp called Lalapa lusa or another fly called Reissa roni. No, we didn't make those up, the scientists did. And if you'd like to see many, many, more of these weird names, just check on the website:
www.curioustaxonomy.net/puns/puns.html
Really, truly, this article started out fully serious, but we couldn't resist showing you the funny side of science.
