Strain Names science

Why are Strain Names So Strange?

The names of cannabis strains are competing to be the most confusing.
Why?

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Written by Aaryn Indica

What does WAP, Judgment Day, Megan Fox and Baby Yoda all have in common? They’re all strain names I’ve had to say to strangers with a straight face.

Being a budtender, you often run into some strains with very strange - and sometimes even off-putting - names. Even the most classic of strains can have the most questionable of names, like the classics Green Crack, Headband, Gorilla Glue.

While things like beer or wine have fancy categories and terms named after places, the names of cannabis strains often find themselves pushing the limits of what is normal, or even how ridiculous and memorable a strain name can be.

If you've ever browsed a dispensary menu or asked your dealer what they have on offer, their answer has probably left you wondering - ‘Why are strain names so weird?’ I did too, for a really long time. (Hell, I still wonder how some breeders get away with this shit-)

But after months of working in the legal cannabis industry here in New York, I can finally say I’ve found the method in this MJ-strain-name madness.

If you've ever wanted to know why strain names are so weird, here are 4 reasons why.

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1) Genetics

There is nothing that weed geeks love talking about more than genetics.

Cannabis is a unique and versatile plant with very complicated chemistry behind it. But to put it simply, cannabis plants are more like us than you may think.

Cannabis plants need two sets of DNA - from a mother and a father - in order to produce their own genetics and personal genotype. Just like us, a plant’s cannabis genotype is the resulting blend of their two parents. If the two parents are of the same strain, you will get a child of the same strain.

But the real fun comes with mixing families. Enter ‘Breeding’ and ‘Crossing’.

If a cannabis plant has two parents of different strains, then their child will have an entirely unique genotype - one that combines, but differs, from both parents. This new genotype - also known as a strain - will display unique properties in its physical growth, and its potency and mental effects as well. Aka, a new strain.

When breeders cross an indica strain with a sativa one, that’s often how we get hybrid strains.

With so many variations and options in breeding, it can be hard to keep track of what cross is what, and that's where the weirdly specific strain names come in. You need thousands different unique strain names in order to encompass the thousands different crosses you can make. And the thousands of crosses those new strains could make too.

To put it simply, new strains mean stranger names.

If you have ten different strains at your disposal, you can get dozens of two-parent combinations to start with.

On top of that, the same way your two parents can come up with dozens of children with different blends of their DNA, two cannabis plants can produce dozens of resulting plants - all with unique and slightly different genotypes.
Meaning those ten original cannabis plants hold an unimaginable amount of combinations - and a lot of potential for new strains.

Having weird and specific and rememberable strain names help differentiate the thousands upon thousands of different crosses that are made each year.
Many of these crosses don't even make it to market - and are simply experimental grows that breeders do in order to test out the potential genotypes. Out of the thousands of new strains crossed each year - only the best one go on to become large crops that make it to us. And sometimes, the names that slip through may be really, really strange.

But there is some method to this madness. Although it may not seem like it, there is some kind of sorting when it comes to strains. Because of these unique names, you also get uniquely named lineages.

2) lineages

Just like you may take on the last name of one of your parents, it's common for strains to have a similar naming scheme to one of the prominent parents.

This creates what I call ‘Strain Lineages’.

Take Runtz for example.

Runtz, named after the fruity hard candy it smells like, is seemingly the cannabis world’s newest favorite strain to cross. It’s so popular in fact, that if you’re lucky enough to live near a local dispensary, you might even see Runtz multiple times on the same menu.

That’s because there’s now a whole entire lineage of strains with Runtz as its parent.
The is an original OG Runtz came on the cannabis scene in 2018. Since then there are the dozens of new Runtz crosses hitting menu dispensaries every year.

That's why you may see a menu that has things like Strawberry Runtz, Rainbow Runtz, Watermelon Runtz and a lot more. Any fruit you can name - I guarantee there’s a Runtz strain of it. While there may be more Runtz crosses than anyone can count, they all have one thing in common - all of them have Runtz as the parent of their crosses. To put it in simpler terms - they all share the same lineage.

This phenomenon isn’t rare or reserved for Runtz. Every year, beloved bud strains are spawning their own lineages of strains that push the limits of potency and gooey resin production.
The best strains - like Sour Diesel, Wedding Cake, & Lemon Cherry Gelato in recent years - go on to be crossed with almost everything, producing new and even improved strains to carry on their legacies.

That’s why knowing your favorite lineages can be especially helpful when bud browsing.

Chem-Dawg is another great example of this. It’s a legacy strain that has been around since Grateful Dead fans stumbled upon it in the 90s. (One of my favorite stoner stories.)
There's a lot of derivatives of of it, and a lot of the cross strains from Chem-dawg aren't even named after Chem-dawg, like OG Kush or Sour Diesel, just to a few.

However, it’s not rare to come across strains that do include ‘Chem’ in their name, like the classic-feeling Colorado Chem - or alternatively, ‘Dawg’ with Tres-Dawg and Stardawg. These common keywords act as lineages within strains so you can better understand the two parents that went into the stuff you're smoking now.

Some lineages in cannabis strains have huge legacies behind them. But legacy in strain names doesn't stop there.

3) Breeders

If the world of cannabis breeding and crossing wasn’t complicated enough, the world of the people who breed it is even more so.

Believe it or not, but the underground culture of cannabis breeding is a hidden weed world that has been thriving for decades, giving us recent hits like Runtz, Permanent Marker, and Girl Scout Cookies - as well as legendary stoner events like the Emerald Cannabis Cup.

Since the 70s, cannabis breeders around the world have been making names and legacies for themselves. Many of the greatest breeders in bud history have been out of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, or the Emerald Triangle on the west coast of the United States.

These breeders are experts in all aspects of growing - from germination, to large scale growing operations, and harvest.

So, Stoners choose stupid names.

They do diligent and meticulous processes in order to cross strains and narrow down the perfect geno- and phenotypes. The ones that breeders uncover and develop are theirs to name, and after literal months or years of hard work, it’s no wonder why we see so many weird and memorable strain names.

And many of these breeders find key and coy ways in order to tie the strains that are their babies into their own legacy.

One such example is Girl Scout Cookies. Girl Scout Cookies, or simply GSC, is a popular strain name that you can see all over dispensary menus across the country.

But did you know the strain Girl Scout Cookies is named after the company that bred it? That would be Cookies - the California cannabis brand known for their unmistakable cobalt blue branding and their front-and-center CEO Berner. (Seriously, did you know this? Because I sure as fuck didn’t.)

Although the Girl Scouts haven’t been exactly thrilled about the use of the trademark in a strain name - that hasn’t stopped Cookies, and the strain still goes by that name on dispensary shelves today.

Another example of this is a strain I just mentioned earlier - Chem-dawg. Like I said, Chem-dawg has been around since the 90s and originally it was spelled Chem-dog - D-O-G.

However, in the early 2000s, a notorious breeder named Top Dawg NYC changed that. Top Dawg, who spells his name D-A-W-G, became a large part of popularizing the strain on the East Coast and in doing so he altered the name just a tad - as a way to engrain his own legacy on the strain.

But if we’re being honest here, there’s one huge reason why dispensaries are graced with ridiculous strain names. Bigger than genetics or the breeders than make them, is the cash that comes from them.

4) Sales

We were all thinking it. To some extent, strange names are - kind of - largely influenced by sales. Some strange names aren't connected at all to their breeder or lineage, instead opting to go with something that’s honestly, just more eye-catching or interesting.

Sales-based strain names are somewhat of a standard in the legal industry, unless you know the lineage keywords to look for.

To me though, the sales-based strain names fall into two different categories.

The first is descriptive. These are strain names that are meant to be a bit more accessible to the smoker. To those that don’t know or care about lineages, or the smoker that’s going more based on vibes and smell.

These strain names are meant to give the smoker a better sense of what they’re getting into before they spark up. (Kinda like how perfume commercials don’t actually make any sense. It’s all vibes here, people.)

These names may be very straightforward. Typically strains with places in their name are land-based strains whose genetics originate from that place, like Acapulco Gold from Mexico or THAI-tanic, which comes from the landrace strain of Thailand.

Some may be more descriptive, like the simple Haze or the slightly concerning Green Crack.

My favorite of this category would be by far the name ‘Gorilla Glue’ - given to the strain because it’s buds were so sticky that the growers found their scissors getting stuck together when they went tried to trim it.

Others however are meant to be more distinctive. Eye-catching, memorable, and sometimes - funny. The distinctive ones can be particularly daring. Like Judgment Day from T'Kal or Purple Panty Dropper from Dank.

Oftentimes, they’re skirting on the edge of copyright infringement to some degree, such as Oreo Runtz (or all Runtz strains for that matter), Rainbow Beltz, or my personal favorite - Baby Yoda. (The fact that Disney hasn't sued somebody yet over a cannabis strain named after a child character is beyond me.)

These ones are meant to be distinct and stand out from other ones.

If you like a particular Runtz strain, it can be hard to remember if it was a ‘watermelon’ or a ‘rainbow’ or a ‘grape’ cross of the strain. However, if you specifically remember that the strain had Megan in the name, it's pretty easy for the budtender to tell you that they have only one strain named Megan Fox.

In my opinion thought, some strains perfectly balance this blend of ‘descriptive’ and ‘distinctive’ - ones like Cherry Gumbo. If you particularly like strains that start with the word Cherry, then that may be enticing to you, but the addition of gumbo is succinct enough to remember later when it comes to the world of confusing cannabis strains.

So sure, some strain names are strange - and borderline stupid.

But if you ask me, I think it’s the perfect form of stoner science.
Once you master the art of understanding strange strain names, finding the strain that's your favorite and looking out to spot it in the wild is one of the most fun things you can do as a stoner.

Over time I've realized that I don't really like that sweet or lemony strains.

I love my bud funky and skunky. I love ChemDawg and Cheese and Gorilla Glue strains So anytime I see something that has Chem, Cheese, Glue in the name, I know that's something that’ll be up to my standards.

Learning strains that are to your taste are super helpful when going to a different town or legalized state. Over time you can even learn which strains you'll like just by hearing their name - or even just smelling them (check out our article on terp-tasting for more on that.)

Next time you pick up, you can approach budtenders to simply tell them a list of your favorite strains and ask them if they have any crosses available. Chances are they'll probably have some kind of cross for at least one of the strains you enjoy, so you won't have to go blindly picking through dispensary menus.

You’ll be surprised with how easy it is to find a new strain to love.

Although a lot of strain names can be weird, strange and almost embarrassing to say, they’re something that makes cannabis culture distinct and unique. ‘Sipping white wine’ will never sound as good as ‘Smoking on some White Widow’. There's nothing like going into a store, looking somebody in the eye and asking for a jar of WAP.

That’s probably why one of my favorite memes as a budtender is this one.