scientific names for fictional creatures?

Question

I write many fantasy stories and chart out video game concepts. For one of them, I have a very scientific society that likes to analyze everything and put their magical world in an order, which includes scientific names. What I am wanting is a way to figure out what the scientific names would be for such non-existant creatures as the unicorn, dragon, chimera, satyr etc.

furthermore, I made up plenty of animals myself, so simply a binomial name for the above mentioned would not help as I have much more that don't exist in antiquity such as a flan, flying trilobite, bipeal wolf, you get the point. I would like to know what are the premises under which phylum, class order, and others are seperated. I know how kingdoms are seperated, but from there, I don't know how to seperate them into phyla

I have a fair knowledge of latin, I can read it and have a dictionary, so I can make up new words, but I just need to know what quality I have to find a word to describe.

well sorry if it's in the wrong category I just want some help, if you must know, The two races of this particular world speak Latin and Icelandic, the Latin speakers being the founders of science and technology

well sorry if it's in the wrong category I just want some help, if you must know, The two races of this particular world speak Latin and Icelandic, the Latin speakers being the founders of science and technology, the latter of magic

Answer 1

What a cool project! So to answer one of your questions, the crucial distinction among your phyla will be whether or not they're chordates -- which of course includes the vertebrates (but also some invertebrates such as sea squirts and certain worms).

So your bipedal wolf (I'm assuming the missing d was a typo, but if "bipeal" is a word from your universe, please let me know) would be phylum chordata, class vertebrata, order mammalia, family canidae, genus canus, species lupus bipedalis (and I'm envisioning something like a cross between Lawrence Talbot and Speaker-to-Animals, without retractible claws). But that's just off the top of my head.

One thing I've discussed with my ten-year-old son is the absence of hexapod vertebrates -- e.g. flying horses, winged dragons, etc. If you were closer, I'd invite you over for coffee and an all-day discussion of where to classify them, and how they evolved. Since all terrestrial vertebrates have essentially the same structure, it's clear they all shared a common ancestor which makes hexapodal vertebrates, sadly, impossible in our known universe -- so was there a hexapodal (imaginary) marine vertebrate who also scuttled across the floors of silent seas before crawling out of the surf and saying "Hey, the carcharodons can't get me here! Kewl!"? ...Which of course suggests all sorts of hexapodal marine vertebrates that shared the same skeletal architecture. Ooooh, fun.

And the final question... so zoology is the study of animals. There's also cryptozoology, which I've described flippantly as "the study of imaginary animals." But of course, it's more technically the study of animals that may or may not exist. So what would we call your zoology, which is the study of animals you've intentionally invented? Oh, of course, poeiazoology (-poeia, meaing to construct -- as in mythopoeia, the term Tolkien invented to describe the invention of mythologies.)

And on that note, elen sila lumen omentielvo!

Answer 2

In brief, the genus name must be a noun, and is capitalized. The specific name is an adjective which modifies the noun, the ending of which must be modified to agree in gender with the noun, and is not capitalized. The genus name + the specific name constitutes the species name.

A second noun can also be used as the modifier (the specific name). We do this frequently in English, in such expressions as stamp collection, fire truck or music store. When a noun is used as the specific name, it is not capitalized, but it keeps its normal gender ending.

If you really want to know the ins and outs of assigning scientific names to animals, you need the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, which can be found here:

http://www.iczn.org/

It's not light reading though.

.

Answer 3

Unicornus is the latin name for unicorn, your latin scientific name could be something like equus unicornus.

Dragons are warm blooded, or homoiothermic, so you can out that in because that would be a very specific subclass. It could be Draco Homoiothermic

As for the rest, you know more about Latin names than I do, so use your judgement. For the bipedal wolf, canine-erectus, or something like that. Try to find animals that exist now and apply their names to your mythological animals.

Answer 4

1. Synthea or Syn 2. Xianth 3. Diethen

Answer 5

absolutely no compatibility here ( where exactly is Latin in your fantasy was there a Roman Empire ? )

if i was pursuing this i would invent my own language from antiquity of course no one would understand it just like Latin ( so now you need a glossary don't you )