Folk taxonomy

Folk taxonomies exist to allow popular identification of classes of objects, and apply to all subsections of human activity.

These naming systems are a vital aid to survival and include information such as the fruiting patterns of trees and the habits of large mammals.

One of the best-known and most influential studies of folk taxonomies is Émile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

Developed by Carl Linnaeus, this nomenclatural system allocates taxa (groups of biological organisms recognised by systematists) into categories (absolute ranks).

[7] Native Tzeltal speakers in the Mayan region of Mexico were found to have developed such divisions towards the crops they most frequently use in everyday life.

For instance, glottochronological evidence suggests that the names of five plants of great societal importance in Mesoamerica are more than 7000 years old.

[8] The 9/10 remaining volumes of Historia Plantarum, written by Theophrastus, early philosopher, botanist, and student of Aristotle, describe an initial vernacular naming system of plants.

[6] Theophrastus used sources such as Diocles for herbal information and a naming system similar to Aristotle's classification of animals.

The first time a folk taxonomy hierarchy was published which did not feature plants or animals was in 1961 by Charles Frake in disease diagnosis of Mindanao in the Philippines.

[19] Linnaeus distinguished groups of human beings upon the basis of their apparent race in addition to several outliers such as wild children (Homo sapiens ferus).

[20] However, as anthropology has developed Linnaeus' classifications have proven incompatible with the reality of human differentiation stemming from a cultural basis.

[20] Folk taxonomy in the sense of linguistic culture, and thus injustice, is a divided subject built upon a variety of distinct theories and methods of analysis.