well there isnt an easy answer and just to throw a spanner in the works, veg plants also have Botanical names Vicia faba is one of the beans cant remember which.

no don't run away. :o)

If I grow the plant I make an effort to learn its proper name but many of the wild flowers I still know by the name I was told when little. those botanical names rarely stick. I do use a good book to check names and if its close to hand the spelling of some of them. Then there are some plants that don't tend to have common names in general use and we all use the botanical name eg . Fuchsia, Dahlia

My biggest problem is how the names are pronounced. If I see the name written I know the name but hearing it!! that is a different matter. My OH bought me an RHS book that also shows how they should be pronounced.

Now what are my 2 daughters names?????

The first thing to do is stop thinking of them as 'Latin names'. They are the botanical names of the plant.

Once you've done that you will find you've broken down a big barrier because the names are no longer 'foreign'.

Pronunciation is fun! Especially the commonly used ones.

Dahlia - we say day-le-ah but named for a Mr Dahl so why not Dahr-lee-ah. It's the one exception where 'Mericans get pronunciation right and we don't.

Fuchsia - named for Herr Fuchs so not Few-shah, I would say Fooks-ee-ah.

Kniphofia - Austrian botanist Kniphof. Austrians might say Ka-neep-hof-ee-ah. I've heard it said nyff-off-ee-ah!

But others would say the names are 'latinised' so should not be pronounced as in their original language. It's much easier to use botanical names in print than in conversation.

And only very few plant names are actually Latin, they are in many other languages especially Greek.

it's like anything else, Snoop - if you use the names frequently, you remember them easily. The trouble is, unless you're in the business, you don't use the names frequently, and you know the rule - use it or lose it! But The Poison Gardener is absolutely right - don't think of them as Latin or other language names, they're just names, and I don't think it matters a fig whether you say cotton-easter when you mean cotoneaster (yes, that's the Latin name, and one commonly used without people even realising it's Latin), it only matters that you're understood. The full Latin handle for a plant is important though - there's question elsewhere I've just answered where the person wanted to know which Yucca I mentioned - it was Yucca flaccida 'Golden Sword'. Ask at the garden centre just for a Yucca and you'll probably be pointed to Y. gloriosa, which is a very different looking plant, so knowing the whole name, including the cultivar (the 'Golden Sword' bit) is important.
If you're worried about pronouncing properly, there's a very reasonably priced little book called Plant Names Simplified by A.T. Johnson and H. A. Smith available from Landsmans Bookshop, Buckenhall, Bromyard, Herefordshire. Or at least it was available when I did my M Hort RHS course some years ago, hopefully still is. When I first started gardening, before I got that book, I used to take a list of plants to the garden centre and show it to the assistant so I didn't have to attempt to say some of the names out of embarrassment cos I didn't know how to say them. Still don't, sometimes, but I no longer care - people always feel the need to correct your pronounciation, even though they know exactly what you mean. Very irritating, that, who cares so long as you're understood.

On a completely different note, but to do with pronounciation, have you noticed that lots of 'posh' people say 'issue', with the ss pronounced as in Sue? I'm mystified, the correct pronounciation is 'ishoo' according to the Oxford dictionary, so apparently, pronounciation depends on class as much as anything else, lol!

20 odd years ago I did the national certificate horticulture...hardy nursery stock
Amongst a lot of other things (It was Such Fun)
was plant identification

We were presented the first week with ten bits of plant
Told what they were and how to spell them correctly

Genus. species. cultivar

So the next week five from the first ten to write correctly, losing marks even for a spelling mistake
another five to learn.....
And so on all the year until over a hundred were in the list, it got harder in midwinter when there were no leaves to help.

But I loved it Fraxinus excelsior...my very favorite I think....
Or Metasequoia glyptostroboides.......

If I remembered it right, its a long time ago but such fun walking through the gardens looking at trees and shrubs throughout the year....forgotten many now but it was fascinating
Maybe thats the way Snoop, learn a few you have in your garden, then as you walk around write them down, again and again without looking, then widen it to the garden centre.....then botanical gardens...

Snoop
One by one, handling them, getting to know them. Like the RHS ident example above, I do a test where I teach ten names a week, and overlap the plants so that 3 of the examples are the previous week's and there are 7 new ones. Repetition and familiarity. Find a few you really like and work on them, then expand it.

I know it seems daunting snoopdog, but stick with it. If you learn two a week, you'll have a hundred by this time next year

The problem is when using common names instead of botanical or Latin names is that some common names that people use can be any number of species. An example would be the common name Bittersweet. This name is given to Celastrus scandens, Solanum dulcamara, Hymenoxys odorata and probably some other species. So straight away you can see where that can cause confusion when someone says they have a bittersweet plant.

The Latin names are recognized throughout the world, using the Latin name clearly describes what plant it is as it's definitive. A friend of mine regularly exports plants and he told me that he has to use the Latin names on the customs declaration or they won't accept it.

Having said that, if people want to call a plant something like a tall yellow flower then they know what they mean.

Yea, but no one else knows Myron! I've got a nutty neighbour who doesn't have a clue what her plants are and has given them names herself, then asks me what might be wrong with bluey (a salvia). Still, takes all sorts I guess

We have a Chusan Palm called George......

I don't know why, its the only plant ever named, but it stuck! :0)

It might be a King Chusan Palm ;o)

Ooh
King George. :0)