On Naming

One of my favourite professors at college was the amazing Dr. Paul Rothrock, taxonomist extraordinaire.

To walk with Dr. Rothrock (my Indian upbringing still cannot get around calling professors by their first name) is to walk fast. The little man is a bolt of lightning on a field trip, moving ahead, seeing an interesting plant, looking at a leaf, and on. Guide book in hand - floppy cap to ward off the sun. Forward.

And here is the task: to determine which of God's creation belongs to which species. Which green growing thing is part of which set of other green growing things - and which is different. Lumping and splitting. Each unto its own kind. Dr. Rothrock is a world authority on one particular kind - a species of sedges (grass-like herbs) called the Carex species. But the good man has an infectious love for all things living (especially living things that photosyntesize).

An amazing article from the New York Times recently mused on the art and science of taxonomy. What spurred me was what anthropologists have discovered about ethno-taxonomy. Unsurprisingly, every culture names things. Surprisingly most come up with the same broad categories for living things - mammals, birds, snakes, fish, 'wugs' (worms and insects), trees, bushes, vines, and herbs.

OK, it makes sense that most groups will classify snakes as different from trees. But, how do you define a tree from a bush? Each culture seems to know that fuzzy logic of splitting the two into separate categories. Further almost all groups use two-name words to classify. The Himalayan oaks growing outside my parents house in Mussoorie are called banj oak, tilonj oak etc. And most local languages follow the same pattern.

Sheba has been reading through the Madeline L'Engle series which starts with A Wrinkle in Time. She tells me that the forces of good are called the 'namers' - and the ones of evil the 'unamers'. The reason is that we name the things we love. Naming means knowing. We cannot know if we do not have some love.

The Bible tells us that every star has a name. Our astronomers assign numbers to them - because of the colossal number of cosmic objects - the words of our language are not sufficient to name all the heavenly bodies.

The Bible also tells us that we are called by name. We name things that we love. The names we give our children are bursting with meaning. Expressing hopes for the future. Saluting and celebrating the past. Bringing new identity to our child who will be bearing the moniker that we as parents have assigned to them for life.

Our names also change with time. We shorten - twist - invent. My mother was saddened the day that I announced to her that from now on I would be known as 'Andi' - written with an i to differentiate from other 'Andys'. I was all of 12 and tired of having to coach people in pronouncing "An-dre-as" - and also ready to move on from being called 'undress'. It took my mother sometime to make the shift - but she lovingly accepted my modification of the name she gave.

But back to taxonomy. Our names and the names we give things are part of who we are as humans. We are namers, organisers, systematizers. We love to see the underlying unity and understandibility of things. The Biblical account talks about God bringing the animals to Adam and he giving them names. God lovingly delegating the opportunity to understand and name the varieties of creation. That work and joy continues today. BBC news recently reported the discovery of a kind of worm deep in the ocean that discards small phosphorescent parts of its bodies ('bombs') and swims inticrately using fine feathery appendiges.

What a privilege to know and be known.