WHY ARE SCIENTIFIC NAMES WRITTEN IN LATIN ANYWAY?
Some of the first people to write about plants and animals were Romans, nearly 2000 years ago! From that point through the 1800s, Latin, the language of the Romans, was considered “the language of learning” by people all over Europe. People on other continents learned Latin, too, so it became known around the world. In the 1700s, a Swedish man named Carl Linnaeus was interested in plants but was frustrated that there wasn t an easy system of plant or animal names. At that time, people used phrases to describe plants and animals. So, Linnaeus shortened these descriptions to just two words, the binomial. This system began in 1753 for plants and 1758 for animals.
