There was a time when I would roll my eyes at the Goldies, Shlomos and Sadies of the world — those old-country Jewish folks with their old-fashioned shtetl names. They may have embodied my heritage — ...

In case you’re wondering, the Swedish biologist and physician Carl Linnaeus was the one who came up with our current way of naming plants and animals. About 300 years ago, he organized what’s called ...