[3] The later generic name Hysteroconcha is from Greek hyster, womb, and Latin concha, shell.

[6] This rare species is unusual in that it has a double series of long, curved spines on the posterior slope of each valve.

[4][5] In his 1758 Systema Naturae, and then in his 1771 Fundamenta Testaceologiae, Linnaeus used a series of "disquieting[ly]"[2] sexual terms to describe the shell: vulva, anus, nates (buttocks), pubis, mons veneris, labia, hymen.

[2][8][9] The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould called Linnaeus's description "one of the most remarkable paragraphs in the history of systematics".

[2][10] Some later naturalists found the terms used by Linnaeus uncomfortable; an 1803 review commented that "a few of these terms however strongly they may be warranted by the similitudes and analogies which they express, ... are not altogether reconcilable with the delicacy proper to be observed in ordinary discourse",[2] while the 1824 Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica criticised Linnaeus for "indulg[ing] in obscene allusions.