Carl linnaeus early life

Summary

In more technical literature, an organism is typically referred to by its scientific name. In contrast with common names, a scientific name is the same in any language and provides a unique name for an organism such that two people can be sure that they are referring to the same organism.  This is not so with common names, e.g., "bream" refers to one kind of fish in some parts of the country, but completely different fish in other parts of the country. Following is an introduction to scientific names.  Because many scientific names are constructed from Latin or Greek roots, you may find this guide to root words a useful tool for understanding scientific names.

The Problem

With so many species on this planet, it is essential to have a way to keep track of all of them, hence scientific names.  As some of you may recall from a biology course, it was Carl Linnaeus who gave us our current system of “binomial nomenclature”.  While you may curse it at times, consider what it replaced, namely a system wher

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