Latin names: WHY?

[s.varty]

Thinking of getting a few fruit trees for my yard (apple,pear,cherry). At the garden centre when i asked "where do you keep your apple trees", the man pointed to where they were.he didnt say " dont you mean malus domestica syn punila". So why do we still use these latin names?. Ive worked with trees since 1985 and never has anyone called a tree by its latin name, apart from a young lad straight out of merris wood , who gave up after a few days after he realised he was talking to himself.

[Le Sanglier]

So the name is the same the world over;

[RobRainford]

Common names are handy for lay mans and easy discussion, but common names differ with where you go, so to get the right species you call the Latin to someone and they will be able to know what your talking about.

[RobArb]

There was a good botany program that janey pointed out a while back on the iplayer on why things have latin names and how it originated, if its still there I'll post it

 

Sent from Rob's GalaxySII

[David Goss]

Common names are handy for lay mans and easy discussion, but common names differ with where you go, so to get the right species you call the Latin to someone and they will be able to know what your talking about.

 

But i will say that i can never remember any latin names at all:blushing: granted i have a crap memory but latin names are so hard to get to stay in.

[Big J]

Latin names are wonderfully universal. For instance, when conversing with my German uncle who used to be a tree surgeon, we just use the latin names to describe trees and there is no confusion.

[skyhuck]

Has as been said its, the international language.

[felixthelogchopper]

It certainly doesn't hurt to hint at the education/intelligence which manual labour does not exclude

[Jamie]

there was a good article in national geographic, one type of daisy has around 40 'comon' names the world over but only one latin name

 

jamie

[b101uk]

there was a good article in national geographic, one type of daisy has around 40 'comon' names the world over but only one latin name

jamie

 

I bet there was only one English, one French and one German name so there is absolutely no significance to there being one Latin name or one Chinese name etc