“Lunatic fringe,” “head case” and “one-eyed pinhead” might sound like insults from the schoolyard or talk radio. But these are actually examples of the kind of oddball names that scientists give to genes they discover.

The idea is to make the names unique and memorable — with so many genes being discovered and described, a little color helps scientists tell them apart. But the trouble comes when science is transmuted into medicine; what works in the lab may be jarring in the clinic.

The names are causing problems for doctors who have to counsel patients about genetic defects with names like “sonic hedgehog” and “mothers against decapentaplegia.”

“It’s a serious problem,” said Dr. Sue Povey, a professor of biology at University College London, and head of the genome nomenclature committee of the Human Genome Organization. Her group is renaming some of the most objectionable names, in some cases by requiring that they be referred to by their initials, to render them inoffensive. The move was first reported by the journal Nature.