Your points are well taken, Joyce, and I have tremendous respect for your opinion. I also learned something from you: I've always been baffled by the attraction to "Indian" beads, Navajo beads, Hudson's Bay beads, etc., knowing they were made in Europe anyway. The only beads the American indians made themselves were wampum.

The the human soul has an innate need to name, organize, and catalog information. What's the first thing you do with a pet: give it a name. A stray animal: give it a name. Naming is the hallmark of science; which is an "organized body of knowledge". To name is to be human.

The problem with "tri-color murrine" is that there are hundreds of them, I still don't know what bead you are talking about. A catalog would help dispell the misinformation we all find so irritating. It will help us look up beads in an index, it would help cross-reference them. It is a documentation of what's out there, and a commentary on how it came to be.

Anyway, it's an interesting discussion. I didn't know I had touched a nerve. Sorry. :)