The British pharmacist Luke Howard loved clouds so much that he came up with a system for naming them. One winter night in 1802, at a London science society, he declared that we should give clouds Latin names such as cumulus and stratus. We use Latin for plants and animals, he argued — why not clouds?
Howard showed his audience cloud paintings indicating the shapes we can learn to recognise, though any name might work only at a particular moment before the cloud changes into a different type. His talk was a big success and word got around that there was a new language for the sky. Soon scientists, artists and poets everywhere were using Howard’s cloud names, and over time more names were added