Why Are All Scientific Names For Plants And Animals In Latin?

Over five million different kinds of living organism can be found on Earth. Many of them have common names, many do not. 

Common names however, can be a little confusing. For example, what they call a pine is the U.S is not the same as a pine in Australia. Therefore to avoid confusion, a standard system of designation was devised. Latin, because it is an ancient language and the basis for most western languages, was the natural choice.

The practice begin in the medieval times, when Latin was the language of the scholarly. in this system, all roses would be designated as Rosa,(the genus) with a short Latin description following to denote what kind of rose it was.

Then, in 1753, Carl Von Linne, a Swedish Botanist published his two-volume work, "Species Plantarum", which listed every known plant by genus and introduced the one-word species name after, which came to replace the complicated Latin descriptions. He also devised a classification method for animals.

Linne was such a Latin enthusiast that he officially changed his name, Carl Von Linne, to the Latinized "Carolus Linnaeus".