Scientific or Latin, Which is Your Pick

At Rock Leaf Water, we care for trees, count trees, and marvel at trees. Recently our teams have been performing PBIs (Plot Based Inventory) throughout Minnesota for the DNR and often use common names and Scientific names for describing trees. While inventorying a set of trees last week, a conversation started about Scientific names and improper term Latin names. As I grew up, I had teachers, classmates, and now even professionals use the terms "Scientific names" and "Latin names" interchangeably. In college, I took Latin to meet my language requirement. I quickly learned that Latin names are different from Scientific ones. I prefer the term "Scientific name," as many of my friends know. However, the terms are not interchangeable, and the term Scientific name is correct. Below I will detail the differences between the terms: Scientific names, Latin names, and common names.

First, let's take a quick look at the difference between Scientific names and common names. Common names are what people use commonly in their day-to-day lives. Some examples of common names are red pine, Norway pine, red maple, and tulip poplar. You may have noticed a problem with common names from the examples. Red pine and Norway pine are the same species of tree, Pinus resinosa, which, coincidentally, is the state tree of Minnesota. Common names are often easy to remember, but there is no universal common name across languages or even within the same language, as we can see with the terms red pine and Norway pine.

Next are the scientific names and the reasoning behind them. The scientific community agrees upon scientific names for each species. They all come in two words; the first word is the genus, and the second is the specific epithet. Let's look at the scientific names of the same species as the common names from the example above. Red pine and Norway pine are Pinus resinosa, red maple is Acer rubrum, and tulip poplar is Liriodendron tulipifera. Unlike common names, scientific names only have one name for each species. Scientific names benefit from being the same over all languages and reduce the confusion about which species is being discussed. It also provides information on which genus the particular plant belongs in. However, scientific names are harder to remember and not very well known outside the scientific community.

So you may wonder where the term "Latin names" comes from. Most scientific names are decided by the first scientist that finds a new species. A few scientists in the 1700s named many of the common species today; the most well-known is Carl Linnaeus. Most Western European scientific papers were written in Latin during this time. Due to that reason, many species were Latin-based names. Such as  Acer rubrum (red maple). Acer and rubrum both come from Latin and translate directly to the words maple red.    

Many people think that all scientific names translate just as easily and come from Latin origin, but they do not. Linnaeus and many of his contemporaries used Latin, people's names, and anything else that sounded good to them. In eastern Europe, around the same time as Linnaeus, many scientists used Greek instead of Latin. So that brings us to our last tree, the tulip poplar I mentioned. The origin of this tree's Scientific name, Liriodendron tulipifera, is Greek. My Greek is not as good as my Latin, but Liriodendron tulipifera translates something to the effect of Lily tree, which is quite fitting due to the tree's flowers. 

Let’s finish the debate. Are scientific names the same as Latin names? I argue not. While Latin was a common language for writing scientific papers back in the 1700s, so was Greek. While many scientific names have Latin base words, many of them are Greek, someone's name, or just made up. (For an interesting example of a made-up Scientific name, look up Mini mum, Mini scule, and Mini ature. You won't be disappointed.) Most names that Romans would use for species would be different from the scientific names, and Latin speakers would not recognize most scientific names. Due to these facts, calling scientific names Latin names is the same as calling them Greek names, or for that matter English names. (Now that English is the most common language used to publish scientific findings.) I won't be mad at you if you use the term Latin name, but you can expect a long-winded history lesson. 

Liriodendron tulipifera

Tulip Tree