this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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People are really awful at naming things.
Some German nerd thought it was cool while they discovered some new receptor so they called it "toll" (German for cool/awesome). Computer science is full of names that are kind of funny if you already know the particular area but are total gibberish if you're trying learn it. We're not even good at naming humans. The default is to either pick one of the names that's common in your culture. When people deviate from that you get a huge number of "special" names.
We need to put this in the hands of experts. I'm gonna propose a new field, "nameology". Those folks will do a bunch of research into names that make sense. How do we best name things so they completely and unambiguously label them in a way that's easy to remember and use? Then they can run around and give non stupid names to all the things.
Hmm, I think we should start referring to the toll-like receptors as the awesome-ish receptors.
Another example: there's a fruit-fly gene named decapentaplegic (which has to do with forming the 15 imaginal discs during embryonic development). When they discovered another gene that interfered with it, but only when inherited from the mother, they named that one "mothers against decapentaplegic".