- Genus name: Rattus
- Species name: rattus
- Subspecies name: rattus
You’d actually say it as R. rattus rattus or Rattus r. rattus.
Also, the scientific name of the Western lowland gorilla is gorilla gorilla gorilla. You’d say it as G. g. gorilla.
The OG
Gorilla Gorilla Allin?
Rattus R. Rattus has some real Chuck E. Cheese energy.
Rattus R. Rattus is his well-to-do British uncle.
Crucially, I forgot to note the taxonomist who described it:
Saying its name trice is a summoning chant, which may have worked a bit too well. You should check your house just in case.
Rattus Norvegus (common brown rat) was named by that Norwegian Linnaeus guy who came up with the Latin naming scheme for species. They are not particularly Norwegian actually.
How dare you say he’s Norwegian! Those mountain trolls could never spawn someone of such greatness! Next you’ll tell me Anders Celsius was Danish, pwah.
Sweden had some good ones. Schele is my favourite. If you are a chemist tasting stuff to identify properties is a bad idea.
As a Norwegian myself I like Kristian Birkeland who in order to fund his aurora borealis research invented the Birkeland-Eyde process of fixing nitrogen from the air. Thereby enabeling the mass production of fertilizer
Offhand I think that be the case for every/most type species.
Not nearly, actually! Exact tautonyms are pretty uncommon, all things considered. Trinomial tautonyms even less so, like Bison bison bison. I don’t think I can give you actual data, but I can say knowing a fair bit of marine taxonomy that it’s the exception there.
Edit: It’s also prohibited in botany and, I learned today, used to be prohibited for bacteria.
Edit 2: Wikipedia maintains an incomplete list, incidentally.
Edit 3: Forgot to mention I was specifically talking about binomial/trinomial tautonyms. Near-tautonyms are very common as you go up toward the middle of the tree of life, e.g. a family, superfamily, and order sharing basically the same name, just with a different prescribed suffix.
Mus musculus was the one I was thinking of. The -culus is just the diminutive suffix.
Does Homo Sapiens Sapiens count here?
Yeah, it’s a tautonym too. H. sapiens sapiens is the type subspecies for species H. sapiens.
Rat in a dollhouse always cheers me up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bYbLv20Q0I
