Not being able to name birds for an ornithologist would be like a physicist not being able to say whether an electron and a positron are the same thing or not.

Did you deliberately pick this example, where Feynman speculated that they might be the same thing?

Names are useful as shorthand for a bundle of properties - but only once you know the actual bundle of properties. I sometimes think science should be taught with the examples first, and only given the name once students have identified the concept.