I have a confession to make: my memory for scientific names is spotty at best. My brain is like that dog with selective hearing, who will ignore you when you try to get them to come back inside, but practically teleports to the kitchen when you say the word “bacon”. Sometimes I can rattle off binomial nomenclature with nary an error, but it’s all too common for the mental Rolodex in my head to fail to flip to the right card, even when the organism I’m talking about is right in front of me. (It happens with common names, too, so this isn’t just a binary issue of common vs. scientific names, and there’s a good chance that my AuDHD is at least partly to blame.)
I would probably retain a lot more of at least some group of living beings if I had gotten a degree in biology or botany or some related field, where a lot of your foundational work requires you to not just memorize but use family, genus, and species names on a regular basis. Because my natural history education (outside of my Oregon Naturalist training) has largely been autodidactic, and relied quite a bit on layperson-friendly scientific texts, I didn’t have that pressure on me to constantly spout off formalized Latin. Of course, I have my favorite species–Canis latrans (coyote), Thuja plicata (western red cedar), Lactarius deliciosus (saffron milkcap) easily come to mind. But most of the time I just have to pull out my phone to look up the scientific names of what I’m looking at, even if I’ve done so before.
Certainly there are people whose professions require them to know those scientific names as well as their own, and the immense amount of time they spend studying their subjects mean they end up remembering both common and scientific names out of sheer familiarity. Moreover, common names vary from language to language, and so binomial nomenclature is a common tongue among scientists around the world studying the same group of organisms.
I’m not in that milieu, of course. Does this hurt my work as a naturalist? Not really. Most of the time I am engaging with the general public, and while there are certainly my fellow nerds who love learning about common vs. scientific names, most of my students, readers, and tour participants are content with the common names of various life forms. I imagine I would have a tougher time in an academic setting where I’m primarily working with people for whom Latin genus and species are (metaphorical) chapter and verse.
That being said, I think that “common vs. scientific names” is an unnecessary dichotomy. Both have their uses, to include in science communication with the general public. Laypeople are more likely to recognize and remember common names in their language because they use words they’ve already encountered. However, scientific names require them to memorize terms in Latin, a dead language that (unlike yours truly) most people did not take for their language requirements in high school. Recognition and retention are going to be tougher in an unfamiliar language, and so common names are generally more user-friendly.
As a naturalist, while common names are easier for me to pull out of my spotty memory, scientific names are crucial for me to understand the relationships among various beings. Knowing two very similar species are in the same genus tells me that they are close cousins, rather than products of convergent evolution. Understanding that there are over 30,000 species within the family Asteraceae means that I’m very often right when I surmise a new-to-me wildflower “just kinda looks like an Asteraceae“. And while I’m not going to bore a casual tour group by spouting a bunch of binomial terms, it is nice to pull one out now and then, especially if pointing out those aforementioned relationships among species.
So really in the end, the common vs. scientific names thing isn’t so much a case of either/or, but both/and. Each has its own strengths and uses, and you’re certainly welcome to make use of both as you see fit. But don’t stress if you can’t remember every scientific name of every living thing you run across. For the everyday naturalist, learn the names of your nature neighbors that make the most sense to you, and are best for connecting to these amazing beings around you.
The importance of scientific names allows a worldwide understanding of the plant (or other species in other kingdoms). The common names reflect regional classifications. For example, one may know it as coral honeysuckle, trumpet honeysuckle, or woodbine honeysuckle, but as Lonicera sempervirens, there is no misunderstanding as to that particular plant.
I agree completely! As I mentioned in the article, binomial nomenclature really is a common language among scientists and other naturalists.