Binomial race names ?

[Grim Reader]

So I was just thinking, what would be the Latin species names for the more common D&D races?

Humans are Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Elves are Homo Calaquendi. Beyond that I get fuzzy. Any suggestions?

I figure the PHB races all go into the Homo genus. Goblins and Ogres, at least in my world, goes into Pan. I figure something that make the Hobbit an branch of Florenesis, and Orcs a branchout of Heidelbergensis. Beyond that, no idea.

[PhoenixPhyre]

So I was just thinking, what would be the Latin species names for the more common D&D races?

Humans are Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Elves are Homo Calaquendi. Beyond that I get fuzzy. Any suggestions?

I figure the PHB races all go into the Homo genus. Goblins and Ogres, at least in my world, goes into Pan. I figure something that make the Hobbit an branch of Florenesis, and Orcs a branchout of Heidelbergensis. Beyond that, no idea.

My setting doesn't lump all the PHB races into Homo. In fact, there are three major groups of playable races. Forgive my latin, it's all via google. Not all of these are playable, but they're there to show patterns.

Genus Fulgor -- descended from the Light-born, the primeval race that served light and darkness, good and evil before the beginning.
-- F. fidelis : angels
-- F. infernalis : devils
-- F. arcanus : high elves
-- F. sylvestris : wood elves
-- F. tenebris: dark elves

Genus Proteus -- descended from the Proteans, the primeval race that served Change before the beginning. All except P. multiplex were created artificially from P. multiplex.
-- P. multiplex : goblinoids (so called because they are highly mutable)
-- P. pius : humans (so called because it was humans that first turned to the gods as a source of power)
-- P. iratus : orcs
-- P. hobbitii : halflings
-- P. serpens : yuan-ti
-- P. draconis: dragonborn
-- P. pius infernalis : tieflings
-- P. pius fidelis : aasimar
-- P. pius elementus : genasi

Genus Tyrannis -- descended from the Titans, the primeval race that served Creation/Order before the beginning. There are others, but they're all giant-kin.
-- T. brevis : dwarves
-- T. famelicus : hill giants
-- T. stultus: ogres
-- T. ceraunis: storm giants
-- T. paeonis: trolls

[Lalliman]

I'm pretty sure that Forgotten Realms and the other default D&D settings run on creationism instead of evolution, which means Linnaean taxonomy doesn't work. If we ignore that, we still have the issue that every humanoid seems to be able to produce fertile offspring with any other, which by conventional logic would make them the same species. However, it is possible for two species to produce fertile offspring without being considered the same species if the parental DNA doesn't "mix". (E.g. the mating of two half-elves would produce 25% purebred humans, 50% half-elves and 25% purebred elves, no intermediates.) For the sake of making sense of this, we'll assume that that's how it works.

That said: Humans, dwarves and halflings are probably in the Homo genus, because they're all the same thing with different proportions. Humans wouldn't be called Homo sapiens in a world where they aren't the only intelligent species. Given that they are the most common of the bunch, they'd probably be called Homo Vulgaris. (Vulgaris has nothing to do with vulgarity, it just means common.) I like to think that dwarves are just neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), since neanderthals were shorter and stockier than humans. Not that much shorter, but if they hadn't gone extinct, they might've diverged further in their morphology to distinguish their ecological niche from that of humans. Halflings also have a real life equivalent: Homo floresiensis is an extinct Indonesian people that stood 3-4 feet tall.

(Edit: You already mentioned floresiensis in the OP.)

Elves and gnomes can't be in the genus Homo because they originate in the feywild, so they have to come from a completely different taxonomic branch (or even tree) that underwent convergent evolution (probably divinely-guided). Their binomial names could be anything.

Half-elves and half-orcs obviously aren't species, they're crossbreeds, so their names would just be "H. vulgaris x (binomial name of elves)" and "H. vulgaris x (binomial name of orcs)" respectively.

That leaves the tieflings and dragonborn, which can't really be classified because they're created magically. (At least, I think that's still the dragonborns' origin, they keep changing it.) I guess tiefling would be Homo infernis and dragonborn would be some arbitrary term.

[jqavins]

In my (as yet incomplete and never used) world, humans, orcs, goblins, and (probably) ogres are all in genus Homo. Halflings would be as well, if I choose to use them. I haven't considered binomial taxonomy until now, but how about this:

Humans: H. Nobilis (because humans made the names up)
Orcs: H. Veteris (primitive man, not accurate, but some human's notion of orcs)
Goblins: H. Callidis (sneaky man)
Ogres: H. Horriblis (self-explanatory)
Halflings: H. Diminitivis (small man)
All are cross-fertile, with fertile young being very rare (as with mules and hinnies, generally thought to be infertile but rare exceptions exist).

Elves and dwarves are what I call "fey touched". They are evolved from members of genus Homo, altered by connection to some aspect of magic or the elements or some such; elves are magic touched humans, and dwarves are earth touched goblins (but don't say to a drawf's face). Many monster races are also fey touched. Nomenclature for these will have to wait, as lunch time is over.

I'm not using the other PC races.

[ben-zayb]

One DM I know of used binomial nomenclature on our campaign for our resident druid (basically latin is druidic) but we just made up whatever horrible pig-latin names we can think of as we go along.

Alas, this kind of humor didn't age well, so I won't be able to post them here.

[Eldan]

Urgh. Inner taxonomist exploding. Can't... nitpick... THE SECOND WORD OF A BINOMIAL NAME IS NEVER CAPITALIZED.

Sorry.

Anyway, off-hand, using parts of existing species:

Homo sapiens
Homo robustus (dwarf)
Homo gracilis (elf)
Homo dirus (orc)
Homo parvus (halfling)

[jqavins]

THE SECOND WORD OF A BINOMIAL NAME IS NEVER CAPITALIZED.I'm an inveterate nitpicker, and I appreciate being corrected when I make mistakes. So thank you. I"ll remember that.