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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mike Eagling" data-source="post: 6150311" data-attributes="member: 6703609">As far as the English language is concerned (although the fact of the matter holds true for any other natural language you care to translate into) we call a bear a bear and a tiger a tiger because these are the names we (i.e. speakers of the languages concerned) developed for these creatures over millennia.Then, following the Renaissance, naturalists such as Charles Linnaeus began applying the scientific method to the classification of natural history, including animals. Linnaeus invented the binomial name (e.g. Homo sapiens) and used Latin because, put simply, that's what scientists did in those days. The binomial system and systematics developed over time and is still used today.Then, about 200 years ago, people started digging up dinosaurs and scientists quite naturally added them to the animal classification. To do that they invented binomial names for them, such as Triceratops horridus. These names are the only names available for these creatures because, unlike bears, humans didn't spend millennia trying to warn each other there was one was stood behind them.So, we don't generally refer to bears by the term Ursus unless we're discussing species in a scientific context. But we do refer to a triceratops as a triceratops because we don't have another name for it.</blockquote>