LINNAEUS.

November 23, 2002 by 1 Comment

I have just discovered that “Linnaeus” was not a latinized version of Carl von Linné’s last name, as I had always supposed and as Webster’s Biographical Dictionary seemed to confirm; his father’s name was Nils Linnaeus, and he took the name “von Linné” when he was admitted to the aristocracy; see the biography here. You just never know. (Thanks, Nick!)

Comments

  1. David Marjanović says
    August 19, 2023 at 3:16 pm

    …and that shows up as a Linné in his later Latin works (like the 12th Edition of Caroli a Linné […] Systema Naturæ […]), his Latin being far too classical to admit de as “from/of” (as in one of his successors, Fischer de Waldheim).

    Nils got his last name when he entered university, taking it from the linden tree at the ancestral farm or something.

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