What’s in a name? In the gem biz, quite a bit. Like cars, many precious stones look alike. But they don’t drive that way. Try putting a Mercedes Benz hood ornament on a Chrysler. It may go over great with Stevie Wonder, but some day somebody’s going to see past the three-point star on the hood to the five-point star on the steering wheel. Like driving into your bride’s garage with a quartz admission ticket, you may fool her the first time, but when she finds out, there’ll be hell to pay. And who needs that kinda grief?

          At the 1991 congress of the International Colored Gemstone Association (ICA), aside from the usual scratching and clawing over treatments, most of the bloodletting occurred on gem names.

          Words flew hot ‘n heavy. How do we separate ruby and orange/purple sapphire? Are all green beryls emerald? Can red beryls be called red emeralds? Will changing the name of red beryl to red emerald make each of us so filthy rich that we can tell our boss what we really think of his new of our time, questions which have taxed the most brilliant minds of a generation.

          I like to watch. At the 1991 ICA congress I stood by and watched the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, gem name madness. But you know about talk at a trade symposium. It’s like a coin tossed into a beggar’s cup: will he become a prince or just buy another bottle of cheap wine?

          Somewhere between brain and drain I was struck by a dart of doubt. In 1989, a vote on ruby vs pink sapphire (pink sapphire was ditched) … in 1991, a discussion of how to separated ruby from purple and orange sapphires… in 1993 we might vote on whether to accept the proposed boundaries between ruby and purple/orange sapphire… meaning another two years of study before the vote… but of course one will have to discuss the interim study… meaning that we just might get the whole thing straightened out before the next total eclipse of the sun, scheduled 127 years from now. And yes, it will be seen best from Hawaii, so ICA board members, get your calendars out – the 2118 ICA Congress should be held in Hawaii. It can be billed thus: “Facing the Music.” We can get Michael Jackson to deliver the keynote address, if he hasn’t beat it up to heaven yet.

          But back to the past. Kicking off the 1991 congress, it was announced to one and all that (sound of trumpets trumpeting) a new gem had been discovered. “Hooray!” cried we. ‘Tis not every day that the planet brings forth a new treasure.

          “What, pray tell, could this consist of?” It’s green, the color of emerald.

          “Marvelous!” we cried with mounting excitement. “Where’s it from? Tanzania? Right on! And what’s it called?”

          “Gublinite!”

          “Gublinite? Oh… really… yes… that’s… uh… interesting… So what’s it really called? Yes, I see… mineralogists call it green zoisite… hmm… that’s… uh… interesting. So what did Eduard Gubelin himself have to say? He doesn’t like the idea of using his name for a gem? Hmm, that’s… uh… interesting…

          The process for selecting gem names is torturous, to say the least. Here’s a typical scenario: Jimmy dug up a red agate and sold it to Timmy, who happened to be in love with Maggie. Timmy dubbed Jimmy’s aggie Maggie, in her honor. But their affair soured, and Timmy eventually decided that he didn’t want to live on Maggie’s farm no more. So he split, leaving the Aggie-Maggie behind. Maggie took up with Tommy, a left-wing labor organizer. He liked the Aggie-Maggie so much it then became a Commie. Tommy was eventually arrested for chaining himself to the doorknob of Vice President Dan Quayle’s office to protest the Persian Gulf War. Tommy’s mommy then founded the “Free Tommy” movement with Maggie, and both went underground. Their first and only act terrorism involved packing the crimson Commie with explosives and sending it to the Vice President. But the Commie bomb failed to go off and was discovered. Dan Quayle donated the specimen to the Smithsonian, where the curator announced it would henceforth be named in Mr. Quayle’s honor. This is how the Aggie-Maggie-Commie came to be known as Dudite.

          If the above makes little sense, it’s par for the gem-name course. While a species name (corundum and beryl are gem species) is used in a consistent way, when it comes to varieties (ruby and blue sapphire are corundum varieties; emerald and aquamarine are beryl varieties), the fact is you can call your stones what you want. Nothing prevents you from taking a red corundum (ruby) and selling it as a… well… as… a foolite. The only thing really stopping you is bad taste.

          “C’mon,” you’re thinking, “you couldn’t get away with selling ruby as a foolite… could you?” It depends on who you are. In 1967, a stunning blue gem was found in Tanzania. Displaying the color you only dream about in sapphire, it was first thought to be a new mineral species. But lo and behold, the gem was a transparent blue zoisite (an epidote-group mineral hitherto known only for ornamental green and pink varieties)

          Among the first to import this materials into the US was New Yorker Jukio Tanjeloff. No problem, until Tiffany & Co got sight of it. Supposedly, when Tiffany received a piece, one of its executives suggested that it be called tanzanite. His reasoning was razor sharp: “What woman would buy a zoisite?” Thus the transparent blue zoisite was foisted upon the public as tanzanite, on grounds of executive whim.

          But there’s more. The unilateral action by Tiffany enraged Tanjeloff so much that he decided to fight whim with… whimsy. He took out large ads in various national publications for the new gem material – TANJELOFFITE! Yeah! Go get’em, Julio! And he made a go of it, but it was not enough. Julio was eventually forced to concede defeat for lack of clout, industry wise and wallet wise. Thus blue zoicite is today traded by all as tanzanite. Nice try, but no Tiparillo for Mr. Tanjeloff.

          The Tiffany firm has had a long history in the gem game. Tiffany gemologist-extraordinaire, GF Kunz, named pink beryl morganite after the firm best client, banker JP Morgan. Dunz himself “consented” to have a pink spodumene named kunzite in his honor (Exactly why Tiffany & Co considered zoisite less palatable the kunzite escapes me. Kunzite sounds like something to wipe off your shoe if stepped on “Eeech! You just stepped on Kunzite!”)

          When Kunz found a rare Brazilian milky blue-white diamond that phosphoresced he named it tiffanyite after the firm’s founder, Charles L Tiffany. Later, after the tanzanite debacle, Tiffany again entered the gem name sweepstakes. A transparent green grossularite was discovered in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park in 1968 and was dubbed tsavorite by Tiffany.

         Just who is Tiffany to decide what we call a gemstone? Well, Tiffany & Co is a large and well-known firm, one with tremendous clout. In its defense, I must point out that Tiffany never went against tradition. The Tiffany executives did what people and companies have always done in the gem trade - they called it what they liked. In Tiffany’s case, because they were big and powerful, it stuck.

          So there’s the problem: gem names are often chosen in an arbitrary and capricious manner. The solution? For starters, one would hope that guidelines could be set up. Like what sort of things gem names will be based on. Will we name the gem after the place it was first found (a la tanzanite), its appearance (rubellite, because it looks like ruby), its finder (painite, after ACD Pain), a famous person (liddicoalite, after RT Liddicote of the GIA), a company (tiffanyite), or perhaps after the way the person felt when discovered it (the mineral mirabilite was named because the finder was surprise to find it.)

          In the past, gem names have been chosen by the person of persons who have made the discovery. Nothing wrong with that, as soon as the name moon orbits the planet sanity. But sanity and logic have been in short supply when choosing names. We’ve been saddled with such thing as lazurite (two different minerals, both typically blue); hessite (a species) and hessonite (orange variety of grossular garnet); and bixbyite (a species) and bixbite (red variety of beryl), which are both found in Utah and both named after the same man.

          To try and clear up this mess, the International Mineralogists’ Association has set up s Commission on New Mineral Names to decide the suitability of names for both new and existing minerals. Anyone who believes they have found something new submits the data to the commission, where it ruled upon. If it is a new mineral, then the name is accepted. But if it’s merely a new variety of an already-names mineral, then it’s not allowed.

          What this has meant to mineralogy is that some well known names have been declared discredited and their use is discourage. This has certainly caused grief among those members of the mineralogical community, who were associated with those names and minerals, but overall mineralogists have bit the bullet; they have accepted this system because its advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. No longer is the influence of a single person or company the deciding factor. Instead the name is determined by an independent panel, based on clearly defined criteria.

          One type of name not allowed is a variety name (ruby is a variety; corundum is the species), because a variety based on its color is infinite variable (as one color shades into another). Accepting variety names means clearly designing where one variety ends and the nest begins. Precisely this problem has bedeviled the gem industry.

          Problems, problems. One of the biggies is that most gem names familiar to lay people are not the same as the proper mineral name. As Ray Zajicek has repeatedly pointed out, you’ll face the uphill battle trying to sell someone red corundum. But sell a ruby and all falls into place.

          So what are we to do? Do we eliminate all special variety names, even those like ruby and emerald, to make our life at ICA congresses a bit easier? Or do we set about the daunting task of clearly defining each and every gem variety (there are more than 200)?

          I propose a third option. How many varieties does the average consumer recognize? Five? Ten? Twenty? My guess is that it’s less than ten, and probably closer to five. We have ruby, sapphire, emerald and a helluva lot of maybes, like aquamarine, amethyst, citrine and…and…agate. Let’s get serious. How many varieties does the general consumer know about? I’m not talking’ rock hound/collector here. I’m talking’ consumer.

          Despite what Campbell Bridges may wish, most people don’t even think about a tsavorite until they’ve got a few emeralds under their belt (and on their fingers and around their necks and through their nipples). So what are we talking about defining less than five gem varieties – and ditching the rest – for the common goods? Yes, that does mean enduring the wrath of those who own a piece of the tanzanite mine and it does mean pissing off those who do a lot of business in citrine and we’ll catch hell from those whose main thing is rhodolite and look out for them that are major traders in rubellite…and…and… think about knows what a rubellite is? Or a rhodolite?

          Truth. You know if we squeeze those stones hard enough, maybe we can wring few drops pit. So here’s the deal. If you can find more than five percent of the gem-buying public that knows precisely what a rhodolite is, then I will spend the rest of my days eating nothing bit mine-run lots of pyrope garnet (what’s a pyrope?). If Ray Zajicek and the rest of the ICA members decide that all gem beryls should be called emerald (green emerald, red emerald, blue emerald,etc), well it’s AAAA-OK with me bro, because at least the gem-buying public knows what an emerald is and they usually have a fairly good idea of what red is! But they do not know what the %#@* a rhodolite is!! I rest my case. The coin is in the cup.