Why genome reference (genome assembly) name is so annoying?

Question

[michaelrichardlei]

Everytime I need to remind me that hg38 is GRCh38, hg19 is GRCh37, so hg38 is the new version of hg19.

Why the UCSC didn't name it hg20?

[WouterDeCoster]

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. —Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Answer 1

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

http://genome.ucsc.edu/goldenPath/newsarch.html

Starting with this release, the UCSC Genome Browser version numbers for human assemblies will match those of the GRC to minimize version confusion. Hence, the GRCh38 assembly is referred to as hg38 in Genome Browser datasets and documentation.

[michaelrichardlei]

Thanks for your reply, I get it now.

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

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