The Brennholt Institute of Applied Taxonomy finds that objects sold by size but never classified share three traits: a trade word that overlaps, a number nobody has published, and a buyer who points instead of naming. In its first review of 60 common objects, the Institute found 41 with no published classification. It calls this the naming problem.
The sample is small, and the Institute does not generalise from it. It is, however, enough to suggest that the gap is the rule and not the exception.
| Trait | What the Institute observes | Example page |
|---|---|---|
| The overlapping word | One trade word covers a spread between makers | Guitar pick thickness |
| The unpublished number | The figure exists in the trade but is written nowhere | Shoelace length |
| The pointing buyer | The buyer cannot name the size and asks for 'one like this' | Marble sizes and names |
The Institute records three causes, and finds that an object with all three is the least likely to have a classification.
Where an object matters to safety, engineering or trade, a classification usually exists. Wire has gauge systems, which are explained on the wire gauge page. Fasteners have standards. Paper has its sizes. The Institute does not contradict any of these and treats them as the model of what a settled classification looks like.
The naming problem begins where this ends: with the object so ordinary that it never mattered enough.
It measures the object, records any trade usage, and proposes a classification, stating plainly that the classification is its own. It then notes the disagreements among its own reviewers, since a classification with no stated disagreement looks more settled than it is. The proposal is offered as the first draft of a vocabulary, in the hope that it is corrected.
The Institute's reasoning is that a wrong name can be fixed and a missing name cannot. Anyone who disagrees with a class boundary can say so, and the argument is an improvement on silence.
In the Institute's review of questions typed about such objects, many ask for a name that does not exist. Marble sizes and names is the clearest case. The searcher is not asking for a measurement. They are asking what to call the thing they hold, so that they can say it to someone else. A name is a tool for a conversation between two people, and the lack of one is felt most when the second person is a shop assistant.
That is why this department sits apart from the four that precede it. A reader of the Department of Nomenclature will find numbers, as elsewhere, but the numbers serve a word.
The register of what the Institute will and will not consider is set out in its admission criteria, and the wider argument is in objects classified by none. For the first worked case in this department, see marble sizes in millimetres and inches.
The review panel divides on whether the gap is a failure. One member holds that an unnamed object is simply an object nobody needed to name, and that a proposed name creates a demand it then claims to meet. The majority hold that the questions people type are the evidence of demand, and that a name proposed in response is a reply and not a cause. The Institute proceeds on the majority position.