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Category writing
Animal and plant species
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| Plant names from a children's encyclopedia |
There are several types of animal and plant species name. The usual Japanese name is called the wamei (和名). Previously the wamei was written in kanji, but with the introduction of the toyo kanji in 1946 it was declared that animal and plant names should be written in kana. Nowadays, katakana is usually used to write species names.
The scientific name, the Latin name, called the gakumei (学名) of a plant or animal, is usually written in Roman letters.
Here is one example:
| kanji name |
wamei |
eimei (English name) |
gakumei |
| 大和撫子 |
ヤマトナデシコ (yamatonadeshiko) |
fringed pink |
dianthus superbus |
For more about this plant, see yamatonadeshiko.
Links
Animal and plant naming from jeKai.
:This discusses the relative frequencies of use of the various writing systems.
A list of plant names in various languages including Japanese (uses images rather than text).