How to get name of taxonomy

HI,

I want to retrieve the name of a taxonomy that I created in back-end.
In case of that taxonomy be empty I want to display a message in the same space in order to the site keeps the good configuration.

I have the following to get the terms:

foreach($terms as $term):
$term_link = get_term_link($term->slug,$term->taxonomy);
$term_name = $term->name;

I’ve tried to do something like:
if($term->taxonomy== NULL || $term->taxonomy== ”)
echo “nothing”;
else $term_name = $term->name;

But not worked.
Some suggestion how to do it? Or some way to retrieve the name of taxonomy like $term->taxonomy{attribute_name} ..

Thanks.