• Question: Why are scientific names for people so long and wordy, for example radiographer or orthodontis?

    Asked by elmo97 to Andrew, Marianne on 24 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      Hi Elmo, to make us feel important and to confuse people who don’t encounter them everyday.

      There seems to be a bit of a trend for deriving these names from Greek/Latin.

      Nowadays we are desperately trying to move away from speaking in these terms because we want folk to know who we are and what we do. I think people used to put trust in important sounding folk because they didn’t have access to the facts they needed to make informed choices themselves. That is hopefully different now.

    • Photo: Andrew Maynard

      Andrew Maynard answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      Hi elmo97,

      Answer 1: Because you can pack a lot of useful information about what a person does in a long name.

      Answer 2: Because scientists are an insecure bunch, and long names make them feel important!

      🙂

    • Photo: Marianne Baker

      Marianne Baker answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      They’re not that long; they’re just several words stuck together!
      It describes their job; perhaps we should move to some sort of image-based language system (like the Chinese languages), d’you think??

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