To mark the 20th edition of Zygote I felt it appropriate to include this paper by Professor Herranz from Spain on the origin of the words zygote, gamete and embryo. On reading this manuscript it came as little surprise to me that over the years the passage of information has distorted the origin of these terms and assigned merit to other more popular authors. Professor Herranz has painstakingly reviewed the literature, using both the Internet and hard copies, to get to the bottom of this argument, and in doing so has raised two questions of fundamental importance to science, the misappropriation of ideas and the incorrect use of biological definitions.