Binomial Nomenclature was introduced by Carolus Linnaeus. In this method every organism is given a scientific name, which has two parts, the first is the name of the genus (generic name) and the second is the name of the species (specific epithet) e.g.: Homo sapiens In the above examples, Homo is a generic name, while sapiens is the name of the species belonging to Homo.
Guidelines:
- scientific names are generally in Latin or derived from Latin irrespective of their origin
- The scientific names are written in italics or underlined (when handwritten)
- The first word denotes the name of the genus and the second word denotes the specific epithet
- The generic name starts with a capital letter, while the specific name starts with a small letter (If a specific name starts with a capital letter it denotes the name of a person or place)
- The name of the author is written in an abbreviated form after the specific name e.g.: Homo sapiens Linn.
