Linnaeus Erases Names

Quechua speakers called it Quinquina or Yaracucchu Carachucchu — names whose components literally described the shivering fever it treated. Linnaeus renamed it Cinchona after a European countess, severing the plant from its South American origins and indigenous knowledge.

In Critica botanica, Linnaeus explicitly rejected “foreign names” and names “invoking plant uses” — the exact conventions that encoded indigenous medical knowledge. He didn’t just organize nature. He erased ways of knowing and called the erasure science.

Antonio de Nebrija: “Language has always been the consort of empire.”