The International Committee on Bionomenclature (ICB, http://www.bionomenclature.net/) met in Berlin from 26–28 April 2012. As a part of this meeting it reviewed the status of communication between and change in the various international sets of rules that biologists follow when naming organisms – the Codes of nomenclature. The group exchanged updates on the status of the Codes (see Table 1 for abbreviations used for the various Codes of nomenclature) and discussed how to enhance inter-community communication with the aim of bringing together those concerned with naming life on Earth.

Recent progress on developing a Global Names Architecture (http://www.globalnames.org) has meant that the communities working on the various indices for a variety of organism groups are not only working in their own domains, but are increasingly developing technological solutions to enable more efficient retrieval of names of all organisms, along with information pertaining to their first publication. As groups focused on the nomenclature of various organisms work more closely together, efficient communication becomes ever more important. Recent changes in the rules governing the naming of prokaryotes (Labeda 2000; and for example Labeda and Oren 2011) and of algae, fungi and plants (see Hawksworth 2011; Knapp et al. 2011; McNeill and Turland 2011), in addition to those proposed for zoology (e.g., International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature 2008), are bringing the terminology used in and practices of the Codes closer together, and the Committee felt that agreement on a basic set of terms to be used when engaging in inter-community communication would greatly assist this on-going process. Naming of organisms is so critical that it is important that we work together on a greater consistency in nomenclatural practices to enable a swifter, more efficient documentation of biodiversity and help meet the global challenges of understanding Earth’s genetic diversity and resources.

This table of terms is not comprehensive, but includes those terms that differ (or have differed in the past) significantly and have the potential to cause confusion. It is based on the table of equivalence of technical terms arising from discussions on harmonisation of nomenclature (Hawksworth 1995) and that accompanying the first Draft BioCode (Greuter et al. 1996). These early attempts have here been updated to reflect current usage of terms in the various Codes. As with the early tables, the terms in each row are not perfectly congruent. We recommend the use of these terms to facilitate communication between those working with the nomenclature of different groups of organisms without necessarily displacing those used by tradition within the various communities. These terms can be employed where considered of value in presentations, publications, and teaching, as well as in discussions between the communities who use the different Codes. We invite and welcome comment on the commended terms, and suggestions for other terms that have caused confusion that might be added – our aim is not to impose practice, but to facilitate communication among all involved in the naming of organisms of all kinds.