Just learned an alternate meaning of a vaguely familiar word: tautonym.

From the Wikipedia page:

In biology, tautonym is an informal term to indicate a scientific name of a species in which both parts of the name have the same spelling. The first part of the name is the name of the genus and the second part is referred to as the specific epithet in the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants and the specific name in the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.

Tautonymy — the usage of tautonymous names — is permissible in zoology but not in botany. (Assume what you will of zoologists and botanists.)

The pictures above show some of my favorite mammals that have tautonymous scientific names. They are taken from this awesome Wikipedia list. I’m having a lot of fun with the names on the list. Some are familiar, some are new to me, some sound really cool, and as with most scientific names, some are unpronounceable.

And no, there are no plants in the list.

PS: To the obsessive biology nerds reading this — Yes, I know scientific names must be italicized or underlined, but Tumblr does not allow styles in the image captions.

sarah531:

Doctor Who name meanings

Cool meanings for Rory and River. Donna as well. :)

I’m sure I’m not the only one who noticed.