Original Syn v. 2.0 (or dos, or deaux, or dot-to, etc)

17 years ago

Hi All,

Okay, it seems like a few people are bring up the subject of fig names again. It seems like every time the subject is brought up, it increases the level of confusion and frustration. So, I thought I would throw out some questions to see if there any consensus on what a Synonym even is, much less if one fig is synonymous with another.

I'll begin here... What is a synonym? Dictionary.com defines it (biologically anyway) as:

"3. Biology. one of two or more scientific names applied to a single taxon."

So this definition raises more questions than it answers. Who determines what the scientific name is? Who/What dictates the naming convention? the Language? and then there is my personal favorite... if there is a scientific naming process for fig varieties? Do any of the names we use qualify? I mean, really, does "Brown Turkey" or "Black Fig 1" seem like scientific names? Or does the scientific name only go down to the speicies?

Well some of these answers can be found in Wikipedia under the topic "Binomial Nomenclature" and heading "Derivation of names" which states:

"The genus name and specific descriptor may come from any source whatsoever. Often they are Latin words, but they may also come from Ancient Greek, from a place, from a person (preferably a naturalist), a name from a local language, etc. In fact, taxonomists come up with specific descriptors from a variety of sources, including inside-jokes and puns.

However, names are always treated grammatically as if they were a Latin phrase. For this reason the name of a species is sometimes called its "Latin name," although this terminology is frowned upon by biologists (and philologists), who prefer the phrase scientific name."

So we can name them whatever we want. But how long do we have to wait before we name a "unique" fig? What do we have to do to verify a name doesn't already exist? Is going to one NAFEX convention to identify a variety enough before naming? And what about translations? Are they really a synonym? Witness "Noire de Caromb" becoming "Black of Carmomb" and "gris" in many names becoming "gray" or "grey" or "grise" or "grisse". And the lists go on and on

With all of this (and so many other things) promoting mulitple varietal names, its easy to imagine we have over-named by 2, 3, 6, 10 fold.

I don't know what can be done about it. Genetic fingerprinting of figs is okay, but think about all trees out there. How is that ever gonna happen? Perhaps we need an international not-for-profit with the sole purpose of maintaining a fig naming database. We could call it Fig Identification Consolidation and Unification System or "F.I.C.U.S." for short, but I'm not sure how that will translate into other languages ;)

~james

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