Hi shellers, I agree with you and especially with Sue and Scott, common names are useful to begin shelling or to transmit our fascination to others. But in other cases it becomes difficult, at least when you have contact to shellers not familiar to your mother's tongue, even in England not all the common names you use in America are known, I guess. In Germany exist a lot of regional idioms which have their own words for Littorina littorea, Mya arenaria and even if a German uses the terms "Gemeine Strandschnecke" or "Sandklaffmuschel", which are their official common names, I think we will have problems to communicate. The latin names are a good invention to communicate with people from other countries, without regard to their origin. No language or folk is prefered because no one really uses latin or old greek in his daily life. The scientific names one should call them with some arrogance have the advantage to refer to a more or less defined species, and everyone will know what he has to emagine and he can use a dictonary, i.e. a shell book, to get its common name in his language. Nice shelling weekend, Andreas --------------------------------------------------- Andreas Leistikow Universitaet Bielefeld Fakultaet fuer Biologie Abteilung fuer Morphologie und Systematik der Tiere Morgenbreede 45 D-33615 BIELEFELD / Germany e-mail: [log in to unmask]