The way scientists name and classify organisms is often seen as neutral, but it’s shaped by the cultural and intellectual traditions of the scientists themselves. A new study introduces the concept of “taxonomic Graecism,” the preference for names based on ancient Greek, and provides the first comprehensive etymological analysis covering?all 773 families?within the phylum Mollusca. Analysis reveals a strong dominance of Greek over Latin, particularly among European scientists, along with broader patterns such as limited use of personal names and a tendency to honor individuals from the same country. These findings suggest taxonomy reflects not only biological knowledge, but also historical biases and social structures within science.
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” said Juliet Capulet in William Shakespeare’s famous play. And the same is presumably true for mollusks, albeit with different odors. When you think about the scientific names of animals, including our own species Homo sapiens, it’s tempting to see these as neutral, objective labels. But Taro Yoshimura, a researcher in evolutionary paleontology at the University Museum, the University of Tokyo, sees scientific names as time capsules that reflect the culture and education of the people who coined them. By examining the entire set of 773 molluscan family names, which includes the likes of snails, clams and octopuses, he uncovered a significant bias towards using ancient Greek, as opposed to for example, Latin. This was partly due to some ideal linguistic features of the language, but also because 19th-century European scientists used it to show off their high-level education and authority.
For Yoshimura, the seeds of this research were sown long before his professional career. “I have been an avid collector of shells since my early childhood,” he explained. “My fascination with the power of naming was truly ignited at the age of 17, when I had the opportunity to publish my first paper describing a new species. Being given the chance to coin a scientific name myself made me deeply curious about the rules and the human choices behind these labels.” This early experience evolved into a broader investigation of the historical and linguistic landscape of biodiversity.
“Later, as a researcher of mollusks, I spent a lot of time looking at names like Tomichia, Thyasira, Phylliroe and Scyllaea, and wondered why they were spelled in such a specific, slightly fancy way. I noticed that many names seemed to have these Greek-style flourishes that didn't quite match their origins. I wanted to find out if this feeling of Greek dominance was real and whether it was tied to the specific background, nationality or education of the people who were doing the naming in the 18th and 19th centuries,” said Yoshimura. “I discovered that Ancient Greek is the champion of molluscan naming, making up nearly 72% of all family names. But I also found this wasn't always the case. There was a surge in the late 1800s where Greek became, and remained, the dominant language, a ‘linguistic climax.’ This highlights a fundamentally human side to naming. Authors often added unnecessary letters, such as the extra ‘h’ seen in Tomichia, simply to make names look more Greek. This shows that names were often about style and prestige as much as they were about science.”
Such patterns are not unique to particular branches of life, nor to biology itself, but here it is just abundantly clear. The paper highlights prior research on historic Eurocentrism, gender imbalances and geographic disparities in fields such as botany, entomology, astronomy and chemistry. Think about the English names for the planets, for example. All this reflects how Western scholarship has influenced the global language of science. There is an International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) that sets the formal rules for how to name life, and these rules are partially flexible to allow names from any origin.
“As the scientific community becomes more diverse, the way we apply those rules is definitely starting to change. We are seeing a slow increase in the use of modern and Indigenous languages, which is wonderful for inclusivity. However, we also need names to be a ‘universal key’ that a researcher in Japan and a researcher in Brazil can both understand. The goal is to blend local culture into the established scientific framework,” said Yoshimura. “This is more than a matter of mere tradition. It is fundamentally interwoven with our view of science itself. The choice of language and the underlying motivations for naming encode what I term epistemic values, reflecting how we perceive the natural world and which attributes we choose to prioritize. For example, the historical reliance on Ancient Greek, while offering great compounding flexibility, has arguably fostered a descriptive bias. This can lead to a disproportionate emphasis on physical morphology at the expense of other vital scientific dimensions, such as ecology or behavior. In this sense, naming systems are not just passive labels; they are the very conceptual frameworks that shape scientific inquiry.”
