List of short species names


Living organisms are known by scientific names. These binomial names can vary greatly in length, and some can be very short; genus or species names composed of only one letter are not allowed by any of the nomenclature codes, but any combination of two letters and above can be valid if it has not been previously used. This list of shortest species names lists the scientific binomials with the fewest letters. The longest scientific species names can be found in the List of long species names.

4 letters

  • Ia io Thomas, 1902 – Family Vespertilionidae. The great evening bat is the largest vespertilionid bat, reaching a wingspan of just over half a metre. It occurs in tropical Asia where it lives in limestone caves. Apart from being the shortest scientific name of a living organism, it also has the peculiarity of being composed only of vowels. The genus Ia is an ancient Greek term for 'voice', 'cry' or 'shout'; the specific name has commonly been assumed to refer to Io, a woman of classical mythology, viewed as "flighty;" but chiropterologist Thomas Griffiths has theorised that it is instead to be understood as the Latin interjection ĭō, meaning 'an exclamation of joy', and that therefore the correct English translation of the binomial would be 'Shout hurrah!'; Griffiths bolsters this argument by pointing out that Oldfield Thomas subsequently named another two species with the same word, thus creating a succession of "three hurrahs", and proposes that this would be Thomas's way of celebrating his induction into the Royal Society in 1901, despite having no formal training.
  • †Yi qi Xu et al., 2015 – Family Scansoriopterygidae. This was a Jurassic theropod dinosaur that had an elongated finger which supported a patagium, akin to those of bats, which enabled the animal to glide between trees. The name is derived from Mandarin Chinese, meaning "strange wing".

5 letters

6 letters

  • Agra ce Erwin, 2010 – family Carabidae. One of more than 500 named species in the genus Agra of ground beetles; in this case, named after Terry Erwin's wife, Peruvian ornithologist Grace Servat.
  • †Ano ale, †Ano mal, †Ano net, †Ano nym, †Ano ona and †Ano tak - family Liberiblattinidae. Six more fossil cockroaches from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods in the aforementioned genus Ano; ale is Slovak for "but", making the full name "Yes, but"; mal is Latin for "bad", and was given in reference to the deficent preservation state of the specimen; net is Russian for "no" ; nym derives from Ancient Greek Ôνυμα, meaning "name", and is used as wordplay and "also alluding to Nym server, a pseudonym server which provides untraceable email addresses"; ona is Slovak for "she", and was given in order to make the full name a palindrome; tak is Slovak for "so", making the complete name "Yes so".
  • Anu una – family Syrphidae. A hoverfly species endemic to New Zealand. Its palindromic name was constructed as just an arbitrary combination of letters.
  • †Beg tse Yu et al., 2020 – infraorder Neoceratopsia. A dinosaur from the early Cretaceous Period of Mongolia, named after the Himalayan deity Beg-tse, a god of war in pre-Buddhist Mongolian culture, often depicted with a rugose face and/or body, similar to the appearance of the preserved skull of the dinosaur.
  • Doto eo Ortea & Moro, 2014 – family Dotidae. A sea slug from the Canary Islands, Spain. Its specific epithet derives "from the Latin eo, to move from one place to another, alluding to the pot warp on which it was collected, an unstable environment that facilitates the passive movement of the species."
  • Ge geta de Nicéville, 1895 – family Hesperiidae. A skipper butterfly from Southeast Asia, the only species in genus Ge. No etymological explanation was given for its binomial name.
  • Gea eff Levi, 1983 – family Araneidae. An orb-weaver spider from New Guinea. It was given its unusual specific name because, even after it was identified as a distinct species, it remained for years without a proper description and was referred to in several papers simply as Argiope "F".
  • †Hra nie - family Liberiblattinidae. Another fossil cockroach from the Jurassic of Mongolia. Genus name Hra means "game" in Slovak, and nie means "no", but the complete word hranie means "playing".
  • Loa loa – family Onchocercidae. A filarial nematode that causes a disease called Loa loa filariasis or loiasis, one of the so-called neglected diseases. It is commonly known as the "African eye worm", as it localizes to the conjunctiva of the eye. It mainly inhabits rain forests in West Africa and has native origins in Ethiopia. It was originally described as Dracunculus loa, "loa" being the native word for this worm in the Congo and Gabon, and later transferred to newly created genus Loa.
  • †Ol xiai Vršanský & Wang, 2017 – family Olidae. An extinct cockroach with pectinate antennae, known from Cretaceous Burmese amber. Ol means "writing" in Santali language. In addition, this combination of letters looks like "01", which is used for a common abbreviation of optical lithography. Species name xiai is named after researcher Fangyuan Xia.
  • Poa fax – family Poaceae. This Australian grass has the shortest name of any plant. Poa is Greek for "fodder", and fax is Latin for "torch" or "flame", referring to "its dense, spike-like inflorescence which resembles a torch with ascending tongues of flame". While the name Poa fax is accepted as valid by Flora of Australia, and some databases reflect this, such as POWO, WCSP and FloraBase, other sources such as Tropicos, WFO and GrassBase consider it a synonym, superseded by Neuropoa fax Clayton.
  • Tor tor – family Cyprinidae. The Tor mahseer of red-finned mahseer is a commercially important freshwater fish found in streams all over South Asia. It was originally described as Cyprinus tor; its species name derives from tora, a local name in the Ganges basin for mahseers. Subsequently, it was transferred to newly created genus Tor.

7 letters