The Mineralogical Association of South Africa (MINSA) was awarded funding from the 35th International Geological Congress (IGC) Legacy Fund to collate the earth sciences nomenclature in all eleven of South Africa’s spoken national languages. The project comprised a grassroots approach in which words were collated through a citizen-science survey released to the general public. These words were later confirmed during a second stage of the project, in which Stellenbosch University’s Language Centre was appointed to assist with compiling and transliterating additional earth science words. The word list is expected to help make the earth sciences more accessible to a much broader proportion of South Africa’s populace and hopes to encourage more students into this exciting field. The project was led by B. von der Heyden with support from L. Mngoma; S. Hashibi, B. Koovarjee, P. Dinham and other colleagues from MINSA.