The Birds of America
The first formal description of the common merganser was by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his "Systema Naturae". He introduced the current binomial name "Mergus merganser". The genus name is a Latin word used by Pliny and other Roman authors to refer to an unspecified waterbird, and "merganser" is derived from "mergus" and "anser", Latin for "goose". In 1843 John James Audubon used the name "Buff-breasted Merganser" in addition to "goosander" in his book "The Birds of America".