The common names of insects in use in Europe from the late Middle Ages through the middle of the eighteenth century did a poor job of capturing their immense diversity. While folk names for culturally relevant plants and vertebrates generally name a Linnaean genus, many insect folk names designate a family (such as “ant”) or even an order (“beetle,” “roach”). Hence, the artists, naturalists, and collectors who turned their attention to insects beginning in the sixteenth century faced a problem: how to designate their objects of study and description. The artists Maria Sibylla Merian, Johannes Goedaert, August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof, and Moses Harris, and the naturalists Francis Willughby, John Ray, Johann Leonhard Frisch, and René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, employed a variety of strategies to name and distinguish insect species. The approach that each took was shaped by their place in the world of early modern natural history, but also by the nature of their interest in insects: indeed, it was possible to take an intense, life-long interest in them without feeling a need to name individual species at all. Early modern perceptions of insect diversity varied widely; they both shaped and were shaped by practices of naming.
