There is a name or label for everything. Communication will be much easier when the objects are labeled. For instance, when someone says banana in English, those who speak the same language will understand what he means by it. Because a name or label is very much related to language, then there are probably as many labels of things as the number of spoken languages themselves. For example, banana in Javanese is “ghedang””, “cau” in Sundanese, and “pisang” in indonesian. Those labels for banana are not universal. The use of different labels because for different languages to refer to the same thing is confusing and can cause miscommunication.
To make communication among biologists easier, Carolus Linnaeus created a nomenclature system in 1735. The language Linnaeus used was Latin. Latin was chosen because at Linnaeus’ time it was a universal scientific language. He gave the nomenclature in the form of a scientific name to every creature. It consists of two parts: the first refers to genus and the second is species epithet.
This nomenclature system is called binomial nomenclature (in Latin, bi=double, nomen = name). The system also incorporated the name of the peson who discovered or was the first to identify a particular organism.
An example of the use of binomial nomenclature is banana, whose scientific name is Musa paradisiaca L. The genus is Musa, and the species name is paradisiaca. Bananas were first identified by Linnaeus (shortened L.). Any biologists at form around the world will use Musa paradisiaca when talking about bananas.
There is a writing rule to the binomial nomenclature. Genus writing should begin with a capital letter, while the species name begins with a small letter. Species name should be underlined when handwritten and italicized when typed. The name of discorer is shortened or written in full following the species name. It is written with a capital letter, and is not underlined or italicized.
