Breaking down taxonomic names
I’ve been wanting to make a post about this for a while, so it might as well be now.
The discipline of the binomial categorisation of organisms began in Europe, in the mid-18th century. Educated culture was deeply rooted in the study of Latin and Greek, as it had been since the Roman Empire and still is today; so it’s natural that the base of this new system was in these languages.
At first, it was rather easy. Names could be adopted directly from their ancient Latin counterparts of common speech. Some examples of this are the genera Cancer (crab), Bos (cattle), Ovis (sheep), Anguilla (eel), Squalus (shark), Erinaceus (hedgehog), Canis (dog), Felis (cat), and so on. However, three challenges were to emerge over the following century:
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In distinguishing between multiple genera that shared a common name in Latin;
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In describing exotic animals from places like the Americas, Australia and other places that weren’t known to the Romans; as well as many micro-organisms, insects, and other newly-discovered extant life;
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In categorising unfamiliar, extinct animals and plants uncovered in the fossil record.
And so, a new ad hoc format was gradually established. A normal generic name would have two or three components, each one an individual Greek or Latin word (often, in fact, Latinised Greek). Common components are:
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The organism’s group, eg. bird, fish, mammal
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A part of the body, eg. jaw, foot, ankle
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An adjective eg. large, small, ancient
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The location of its discovery. This is common in specific names, where it is suffixed with ensis, eg. sinensis (from China).
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A surname. This is often tributive to a past scientist in the field, eg. Mantellisaurus, an iguanodontid named after Charles Mantell.
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A prefix that describes how it relates to similar genera, eg. pro- (before, ie. an ancestor) and para- (besides, ie. a close relative)
Some organisms, however, do not follow this mold and instead use Chinese or other foreign words, often in tribute to local indigenous people in the area of discovery. A good example is Kelenken, a terror bird named after a demon in Native American folklore.
Category One components (group names) are not always accurate in reference to their classical use, but have recieved a new meaning in the binomial system.
Here are some examples:
| Name | Meaning | Application | Notes | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| avis, ornis | bird | birds | avis is Latin, ornis is Greek. | Argentavis |
| myrmex | ant | ants | From Greek. A Roman would say formica. | Agroecomyrmex |
| raptor | thief | Dromaeosaurs. | This is an interesting case in which originally only Velociraptor (“quick thief”, 1924) had this element. After the massive success of Jurassic Park, dromaeosaurs acquired their common name, and this in turn filtered back into the scientific community. | Atrociraptor |
| saurus | lizard | Applied most famously to dinosaurs, but also to extinct marine reptiles and certain other extinct “reptilian” tetrapods, such as rhyncosaurs. Confusingly, it is not applied to actual lizards. | A Latinisation of a Greek word, sauros. A Roman would have said lacertus or stellio. | Tyrannosaurus |
| suchus | name of a crocodile god | crocodiles, stem-crocodiles, and even some reptiles that were in fact more closely related to birds | Latinisation of Soukhos, in turn a Hellenisation of Egyptian Sobek, a crocodile chimaera deity. The Latin word for crocodile was crocodilus. | Deinosuchus |
| therium | wild beast | mammals | Latinisation of Greek therion. A Roman would say fera. | Arsinoitherium |
PS. I found this chonky lad in the course of my research. Felis chaus, the jungle cat:
Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commonly_used_taxonomic_affixes