According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary,
nomenclature n. 1 a person’s or community’s system of names for things. 2 the terminology of a science etc. 3 systematic naming. 4 a catalogue or register.
terminology n. (pl. -ies) 1 the system of terms used in a particular subject. 2 the science of the proper use of terms.I must say that these definitions do not add much clarity. Do you see any difference between “system of names for things” and “system of terms”? Moreover, the nomenclature (2) appears to be equated with the terminology. As for terminology (2), it is akin to terminology as defined by Wikipedia: “the study of terms and their use”, although I have my doubts whether there is such thing as “the science of the proper use of terms”. As was mentioned before, “logy” does not always mean “a subject of study or interest”. And what is “proper”?
On the other hand, Merriam-Webster defines terminology as
1 the technical or special terms used in a business, art, science, or special subjectNo, this does not help at all. Let us agree on the following: terminology is not nomenclature, and nomenclature is not terminology. I suggest these working definitions:
2 nomenclature as a field of study
- terminology: a set of terms used in a particular field.
nomenclature: a system of generating new terms for a particular field.
Completely different things. Terminology is a subset of vocabulary and, therefore, is part of the language. Nomenclature is a set of external rules. A good nomenclature system has few rules all of which should be understood and applied, preferably with reproducible results, by more than one person.
That is not to say that terminology does not depend on nomenclature or vice versa. Terms can be formed by systematic application of nomenclature rules — that’s what the nomenclature is devised for. But they also can arise by different mechanisms, just like any new words do. Often, terms are recruited from the existing lexicon and conferred new meanings. For instance, the word “residue” acquired specific meanings in fields of math, chemistry or law.
The Russian word for nomenclature, номенклатура, has an additional meaning: the bureaucratic class of Soviet Union and its descendants (as in “post-Soviet nomenklatura”).
1 comment:
Nomenclature is also part of the language. As soon as you name something it becomes part of the language. Words like "chair" and "dog" are also part of the language despite being names.
The way I took the definitions is that nomenclature is about names and terminology is about terms. When is a term not a name? Well to name a few examples: "what", "if", "it", "he". We have lots of terms that do not refer to anything in particular but instead depend on context for their meaning. They are not names so not part of nomenclature but they are terms so they are part of terminology.
These are just my thoughts. Take it with a grain of salt.
I know this post is old but I just started thinking about this a few minutes ago and wanted to vent my thoughts somewhere.
Post a Comment