by Eric Brand

Learning the names of all the medicinals is a daunting task for students of Chinese medicine. Adding to the confusion, some books use different names for the same substances. Why do some books say Mo Han Lian while others say Han Lian Cao, or Zhi Qiao instead of Zhi Shi? Who sets these standards and how do people know which name is preferred?

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Generally speaking, the ultimate authority on herbal nomenclature in Chinese medicine is the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. The Chinese Pharmacopoeia (C.P.) represents the official scientific standard of the People’s Republic of China in terms of species identification, distinguishing characteristics, chemical constituents and analytical methods, and other features of the physical drugs themselves. The C.P. lists pharmaceutical products and some formula preparations in addition to crude single herbs, and it is generally the source that is behind all the nomenclature standards seen the English materia medicas that we use.

Astute readers will notice that the names of some familiar substances have changed over the years. Typically, these changes can be traced to updates in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, which are then applied in other books (for example, Bensky’s 2nd and 3rd edition materia medica texts feature a number of items with names that differ from one edition to the next). The most obvious changes can generally be grouped into variations in botanical and pharmaceutical names, redefinition of the official source plant, changes in the official Chinese names of substances, and changes in standards with regard to pronunciation.

Changes in botanical names often result from reclassification of the plant from one genus to another. Medicinals such as Mu Xiang have varying names in the literature because older editions list its genus as Saussurea while newer editions list it as Aucklandia. Bai Hua She She Cao is sometimes referred to as oldenlandia but its new name is hedyotis. These changes generally do not represent any difference in the source of the product used, rather the plant itself has simply been reclassified by botanists. Taxonomy is a constantly evolving field with many debates on classification. My horticulture teacher in college used to say that this is because “plants do not read books” and their features often blur the convenient lines that botanists use to separate one species or genus from the next. Changes in the Latin binomial name of a substance tend to affect the item’s English name and Latin Pharmaceutical name as well.

Redefinition of the primary source plant also causes changes in nomenclature. For example, older texts regarded agastache and patchouli as two different official variants of Huo Xiang. Nowadays, the only official plant listed as Huo Xiang is Guang Huo Xiang, patchouli. Agastache now appears in the C.P. as a regional substitute rather than an official source of Huo Xiang. Similarly, we see examples of different parts of the same plant assuming the role of the official substance, as in the case of Xi Xin. Xi Xin used to refer to the whole plant but now it only refers to the roots and rhizome of asarum in the C.P.

Changes in the official Chinese name of a plant also account for differences in nomenclature from one edition of the C.P. to the next. For example, the name Han Lian Cao refers to eclipta as well as an obscure local herb that is not common in commerce outside of a small regional area. Nonetheless, potential confusion resulting from the use of a single name to refer to two separate herbal products is best avoided, so the C.P. changed the official name of Han Lian Cao to its other name, Mo Han Lian.

In some instances, the old name remains more common in colloquial use than the official name. In the case of Mo Han Lian, many herb companies continue to use the old name Han Lian Cao because they fear that their customers will not recognize the name Mo Han Lian. Likewise, the official name of Ye Jiao Teng is now Shou Wu Teng but Ye Jiao Teng remains the name that most practitioners are familiar with. For these items, publishers and herb vendors have a quandary- should they use the correct new name or the dated name? The new name is more in synch with global academic standards but the old name is more familiar to readers and customers, so not all sources change their list in response to changes in the C.P.

In a few cases, the name changes in the C.P. arguably represent poor decisions, and everyone tends to ignore them. For example, the name of Sheng Di Huang was changed to simply Di Huang in the new edition of the C.P. Practitioners contrast Sheng Di Huang with Shu Di Huang, so calling Sheng Di simply Di Huang is potentially confusing. Nonetheless, the C.P. does tend to influence labeling practices of herbal products in Asia, so we are starting to see Sheng Di products coming out with a label that only says Di Huang.

Finally, there are some examples of items that have multiple accepted pronunciation standards in Mandarin, and people fight over which pronunciation should be the official standard. The most prominent of these examples relate to items with the word “husk/shell” in them; this word can be pronounced as either “Ke” or “Qiao,” and is found in herb names such as Zhi Ke and Ying Su Ke. Depending on where one is in China, bitter orange may be called either Zhi Ke or Zhi Qiao, and the name Zhi Qiao is showing up more and more often in books that previously referred to the item as Zhi Ke. This is confusing to many Westerners, so the name Zhi Ke is still the one that is most commonly used in print, even though it is no longer considered to be the “official pronunciation” of the substance. A similar situation exists between the names Huang Bai vs. Huang Bo, some practitioners fervently believe that it should be pronounced Bo and others say Bai. This reflects regional variation in Mandarin pronunciation across different parts of China (I say tomato, you say tomato).

We’ve been tackling these issues lately because we are working on the labels for some of the awesome new products that we have coming out. It is tough to decide what to call something like Mo Han Lian, because the older practitioners all know it as Han Lian Cao and the younger practitioners all know it as Mo Han Lian. At Blue Poppy, our books and products use the updated names based on the C.P. with very few exceptions, but older titles from different eras tend to use different names for things like oldenlandia vs. hedyotis. Hopefully this blog will shed some light on this issue, since it is surely confusing to many practitioners and students out there.

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