Page updated 22 Nov 1996 Scientific names are also known as Latin names. As you probably know there are many different languages in the world. Here in New Zealand alone you can find many different languages. Most people speak English, but Maori is also spoken. At school you can learn to speak French and German, and perhaps even some of the Asian languages like Mandarin and Japanese.
Scientific names are just another language.
Most of the words in European languages are based on words used by the early Greeks and Romans. You can find many examples like this in your dictionary. So it is not very surprising that Latin is used to give scientific names to animals and plants. The binomial system. You can imagine that this caused all sorts of problems when scientists got together to talk about their research.