Nomenclature

Nomenclature (pronounced noh-muhn-kley-cher, noh-men-kluh-cher, noh-muhn-kley-choor or noh-men-kluh-choor

(1) A set or system of names or terms, the terminology used in a particular science, art, activity etc, by an individual, community or institution.

(2) The names or terms comprising a set or system.

1600-1610: From the sixteenth century French nomenclature, from the Latin nōmenclātūra (a calling by name, list of names), from nomenclator (namer), the construct being nōmen (name), from the primitive Indo-European root no-men- (name) + calator (caller, crier), from calāre (call out), from the primitive Indo-European root kele- (to shout); a doublet of nomenklatura.  In many cases, the words classification, codification, glossary, locution, phraseology, taxonomy & terminology will be synonymous and interchangeable.  The related forms include nomenclatural, nomenclatorial & nomenclative, nomenclaturally, nomenclator, nomenclatory (and the equivalent systems using exclusively numbers: numericlature.  The noun plural is nomenclatures.

In Ancient Rome a nomenclator was (1) the title of a steward whose job was to announce visitors and (2) a prompter who helped a politician seeking election recall names and pet causes of his constituents.  The meaning "systematic list or catalogue of names" is attested from the 1630s; that of "system of naming" dating from the 1660s while the modern sense of "the whole vocabulary or terminology of an art or a science" is from 1789.  In English, circa 1600, it also had the meaning “a name” but, being a complicated way of saying something simple, this quickly went extinct.

In the Soviet Union, nomenklatura was the "list of influential posts in government and industry to be filled by Communist Party appointees".  The origin of this predated the formal creation of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; (Союз Советских Социалистических Республик, СССР the Russian abbreviation in Cyrillic, transliterated as SSSR in Latin script)) and was emblematic of the centralization of authority and decision making the party organization imposed almost immediately on the state.  It was too indicative of the way the dictatorial structure of the party, mapped onto the mechanism of the state would, disguised sometimes as a collective model, to almost the end distinguish the USSR from many of the non-communist models of authoritarian rule which flourished during the twentieth century, their corporatist nature often misunderstood because of the way the label “dictatorship” was applied.

Formalized during 1919-1920, the party’s system of control was created in the months after the revolution, the Politburo (a creation of the party’s Central Committee which, technically, exercised only the authority delegated by the committee) dealt with all matters of significance and thus reserved the key decisions exclusively for their remit, the routine and procedural matters handled either by the Orgburo (essentially the body which enacted the Politburo’s edicts and coordinated the regional organizations and thus best understood as a kind of party chancellery) or the famously bureaucratic Secretariat.  It was in the Secretariat (where the paperwork from the higher bodies tended to end up) that the need for a reliably indexed filing system to conquer the developing administrative chaos quickly became apparent and nomenklatura was part of the system.  Accordingly created was the Учраспред (Uchraspred), (the Department of Files & Assignments) which, operating rather as gangsters would run as HR department, handled the registration of party members and their subsequent allocation to positions below the higher-level appointments, which remained in the gift of the Politburo or Orgburo.

Comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; early Bolshevik, Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956), Edward R Stettinius Jr (1900–1949; US secretary of state 1944-1945 and ambassador to the UN 1945-1946 (“Stettinius the younger”, his father having been assistant secretary of war 1918-1921)) & Anthony Eden (1897–1977; thrice UK foreign secretary and prime-minister-1955-1957) at the foundation conference of the United Nations, San Francisco, 1945.

Predictably, the structure provided much scope for patronage, nepotism and factionalism but, handling annually thousands of movements, it nevertheless demanded efficient administration, something lacking until in 1921, Vyacheslav Molotov, just elevated to the Central Committee and Orgburo, was put in charge of the Secretariat.  Studious, serious (of the many photographs which exist, in few is he smiling) and with a mind which if not as quick as his colleagues was certainly thorough, he excelled in the role and though the more intellectually illustrious were inclined to decry his “needless and shameful bureaucratism", they couldn’t not be in awe of his capacity to spend long hours sitting at his desk, creating order our of what was a post-revolutionary mess, comrade Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov 1870–1924 and known by his alias Lenin; revolutionary, political theorist and founding head of government (Soviet Russia 1917-1924 and the Soviet Union 1922-1924) dubbing him “stone ass” (often misquoted as “iron ass”), a moniker later used (behind his back) by the negotiators from the West with whom he sat through many meetings and conferences during his long tenure as Soviet foreign minister, his intransigence legendary even by diplomatic standards.  Other ambassadors dubbed him "comrade nyet"; nyet a Russian word meaning a particularly blunt "No!".  "Stone ass" was most productive during those long sessions at his desk, producing endless streams of paper which fed a burgeoning bureaucracy; Lenin also dubbed him "comrade filing cabinet".        

Stone ass: comrade Molotov sitting at his desk.

The English nomenclature was a borrowing in the 1600s of the sixteenth century French which was from the Latin nōmenclātūra (assignment of names to things, mentioning things by name, a list of names).  Almost immediately, the word was picked up by many branches of science (most notably in botany or zoology) where it gained the definitive senses of “a systematic assignment of names” and later in the same century, “the technical terms within a science”.  The noun nomenklatura existed in Russian since the early nineteenth century but it was particular and well-publicized use by the Soviet communists which made it known in the West.  Understanding its implications, the Kremlinologists in the 1950s adopted nomenklatura when discussing bureaucracies and administrative structures in both the USSR and other communist states.

Memo: Team Douglas Productions, 29 July 2004.

Also of interest to students of nomenclature is the process by which the names of people can become objects applied variously.  As Napoleon, Churchill and Hitler live on as Napoleonic, Churchillian and Hitlerite, on the internet is a body of the Lohanic.  Universally, that’s pronounced lo-han-ick but Lindsay Lohan has mentioned in interviews that being a surname of Irish origin, it’s “correctly” low-en, a form she adopted early in 2022 with her first posting on TikTok where it rhymed with “Coen” (used usually for the surname “Cohen” which is of Hebrew origin and unrelated to Celtic influence).  For a generation brought up on lo-han it must have been a syllable too far because it didn’t catch on and by early 2023, she was back to lo-han with the hard “h”.  Curiously, while etymologists seem to agree that historically lo-en was likely the form most heard in Ireland, the popular genealogy sites all indicate the modern practice is to use lo-han so hopefully that’s the last word.  However, the brief flirtation with phonetic h-lessness did have a precedent:  When Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005) was being filmed in 2004, the production company circulated a memo to the crew informing all that Lohan was pronounced “Lo-en like Coen” with a silent “h”.