It’s All Greek to Me! Why we use scientific names for plants and animals We’re all comfortable with using common names for familiar plants and animals. After all, that’s all we need most of the time. So why do we use scientific names? Why say Corethrogyne filaginifolia (kore-eh-THRAH-jin-ee fil-a-jin-i-FOL-ee-a) when we can say daisy instead? Well, most of the time it’s just fine to say daisy, but sometimes we need to be more precise. For one thing, common names may vary around the world, sometimes even within the state or county where you live. A daisy to someone in San Francisco may be quite different from a daisy to someone in New York. Did you know that there are hundreds of kinds of plants with flowers that share the name ‘daisy’? In addition, while one common name can refer to hundreds or even thousands of different organisms, sometimes a single organism can have several, or even hundreds of different common names! For instance, fall aster, New England daisy and Michaelmas daisy are all the same member of the daisy family, Aster novae-angliae. This is its one and only scientific name, recognized in any country in the world, no matter which language is spoken. We use Latin, and sometimes ancient Greek, as the basis for a universal scientific language, and occasionally, words from other languages. We use these ‘dead’ languages because the word meanings don’t change the way they sometimes do in English and other modern languages. You may be thinking “Who wants to learn another language? I can call a tiger a ‘tiger’ and everybody knows what I mean!” Maybe scientific names seem long, unpronounceable and even intimidating, but try saying these out loud: Tyrannosaurus, Pteradactyl, and Chrysanthemum. You probably didn’t even hesitate – yet those are all scientific names. Other scientific names are just as easy once you know some basics. Because scientific names come from dead languages, no one is absolutely sure how they are pronounced, although we do have some generally accepted rules. So go ahead and give it a try. Maybe your way is the right way, we’ll never know for sure. You’ll find that when you know some word roots, you can not only understand the language of biology, but also chemistry, geology, physics and other sciences. Additionally, word roots will also help you to understand our own English language better, and can improve your spelling. You may be surprised to find out that you already know a lot of Latin. That’