Page "Common name" Paragraph 16

The practice of coining common names has long been discouraged ; de Candolle's Laws of Botanical Nomenclature, 1868, the non-binding recommendations that form the basis of the modern ( now binding ) International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants contains the following: Art.

68.

Every friend of science ought to be opposed to the introduction into a modern language of names of plants that are not already there, unless they are derived from a Latin botanical name that has undergone but a slight alteration.

... ought the fabrication of names termed vulgar names, totally different from Latin ones, to be proscribed.

The public to whom they are addressed derive no advantage from them, because they are novelties.

Lindley's work, The Vegetable Kingdom, would have been better relished in England had not the author introduced into it so many new English names, that are to be found in no dictionary, and that do not preclude the necessity of learning with what Latin names they are synonymous.

A tolerable idea may be given of the danger of too great a multiplicity of vulgar names, by imagining what geography would be, or, for instance, the Post-office administration, supposing every town had a totally different name in every language.