Are scientific names really Latin? The story of the Velociraptor 🦖

One of the most famous dinosaurs of all time is the Velociraptor from Jurassic Park. But did this animal actually exist? Is the name good Latin? How should we pronounce it?

🦂 Sign up for my Latin Pronunciation & Conversation series on Patreon:

📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks:

🦂 Support my work on Patreon:

☕️ Support my work with PayPal:

And if you like, do consider joining this channel:

🏛 Ancient Greek in Action · Free Greek Lessons:

👨‍🏫 My Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata playlist · Free Latin Lessons:

🦂 ScorpioMartianus (my channel *entirely* in Latin & Ancient Greek)

🎙 Hundreds of hours of Latin & Greek audio:

🌍 polýMATHY website:

🌅 polýMATHY on Instagram:

😊 polýMATHY on Facebook:

🦁 Legio XIII Latin Language Podcast:

👕 Merch:

📖 My book Ranieri Reverse Recall on Amazon:

Intro and outro music: Overture of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Mozart

Selected Sources:
"You say “Velociraptor,” I say “Deinonychus” (Smithsonian Magazine, 2008)

See also:
Lucian Pronunciation of Ancient Greek:
The Pronunciation of ει in Greek:
Latin of Harry Potter:

00:00 Intro
00:36 The true size of Velociraptor
01:42 Deinonychus: the real Raptor?
03:27 How Deinonychus and Velociraptor switched places
05:23 Utahraptor: the Jurassic Park raptor is discovered!
06:29 Feathers, eh?
07:20 Velociraptor etymology
09:42 Deinonychus etymology
12:25 Should we throw out the terminology?

[polyMATHY_Luke]

🦂 Sign up for my Latin Pronunciation & Conversation series on Patreon:

📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks:

🦂 Support my work on Patreon:

☕ Support my work with PayPal:

And if you like, do consider joining this channel:



🏛 Ancient Greek in Action · Free Greek Lessons:

👨‍🏫 My Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata playlist · Free Latin Lessons:

🦂 ScorpioMartianus (my channel *entirely* in Latin & Ancient Greek)

🎙 Hundreds of hours of Latin & Greek audio:

🌍 polýMATHY website:

🌅 polýMATHY on Instagram:

😊 polýMATHY on Facebook:

🦁 Legio XIII Latin Language Podcast:

👕 Merch:



📖 My book Ranieri Reverse Recall on Amazon:

Intro and outro music: Overture of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Mozart

Selected Sources:
"You say “Velociraptor, ” I say “Deinonychus” (Smithsonian Magazine, 2008)

See also:
Lucian Pronunciation of Ancient Greek:
The Pronunciation of ει in Greek:
Latin of Harry Potter:

00:00 Intro
00:36 The true size of Velociraptor
01:42 Deinonychus: the real Raptor?
03:27 How Deinonychus and Velociraptor switched places
05:23 Utahraptor: the Jurassic Park raptor is discovered!
06:29 Feathers, eh?
07:20 Velociraptor etymology
09:42 Deinonychus etymology
12:25 Should we throw out the terminology?

[Fubumaa]

It’s a well known fact that Roman Legionaries rode into battle with velociraptors during the Second Punic war

[keatonsmith]

Crichton actually had Deinonychus in his first draft, but when his friend proofread it, he thought it was too hard to pronounce so they changed it to Velociraptor.

[hl]

I was once targeted by an Emu in a drive-thru animal park. The thing somehow fixed it's gaze on me from across a field and charged toward me at full speed with laser focus. It was terrifying even though I was in a car and Emu have no teeth! The speed they move at, with those murderous beady eyes... I definitely wouldn't want to tangle with a Velociraptor, not even a 1 meter tall one with pretty feathers.

[ravelordnito]

As a Paleontologist and a lover of language, this video was a greatly appreciated supprise! The reaserch put is is great, and a fantastic way to learn stuff about Latin and Ancient Greek!

[allanrichardson]

Did anyone else see the bilingual pun of “seizer” (for raptor) vs the modern English pronunciation of Caesar? Well done, Luke!

[cabinessence_timely_hello]

Paleontologist here. Just as a note, taxonomy is Neolatin, it's not supposed to be Classical Latin or follow its many rules as much as it is a standard for taxonomical classification based on the role latin had at the time Taxonomy was established. It is a mix of different beasts designed for utility, not any real version of the language.

[sasakurtovic]

Velociraptor = Distanceraptor divided by Timeraptor

[ISawABear]

B.SC in Ecologically restoration here, even in class they taught us the "Latin" in scientific names is mostly BS slapped together, but when it comes to species ID it is SO much better than common names.

[Restitutor-Orbis]

The shoutout to Simon Roper was pretty rad. Two amazingly underrated, though fast growing YouTubers.

[lazymentat]

I'm starting to believe that Lucius is an actual time traveler.

[the_miracle_aligner]

No wonder they were such clever girls XD

[TransSappho]

As a paleontologist who used to study classics you’ve found the exact nexus of my interests. Also, a fun side note. A very early discovery in the field of paleontology was Scelidosaurus, whose name was meant to draw a comparison to a cow’s leg but instead obviously drew comparison to its σκελις

[yoult]

Considering the binomial aka taxanomic naming tradition and later convention was largely coined by Carl von Linné (or Linnaeus how he styled himself) it's no wonder the "latinized" names got so out of hand with a large number of naturalists and scientists who at best had only a rudimentary education in Latin.

[Glockler]

Latin is such an awesome language that even dinosaurs spoke it!

[京狐夢美]

6:24 Requiescat in pace headphone users.

[utinam]

Thank you, Luke, for combining two interests I've had since my schooldays - dinosaurs and Latin.

[marcotedesco]

Didn't expect a discussion about the Dinosaur Renaissance here, and I'm not disappointed! Btw, there's a lot of interesting examples of weirdly constructed taxon names. One of my favourites is that for the White-tailed Eagle, Haliaeetus albicilla; IIRC, the -cilla part was taken from the genus name Motacilla (the wagtails), interpreting it as "(frequently) moved tail", and thus thinking that "cilla"=tail and so "albicilla"=white-tailed

[justoliver]

It’s so nice to see a Dinosaur related video here, as a person who admires the Latin, Greek and many other languages and of course Dinosaurs, this is a delightful surprise and a great way to start a new day :DD

[Cruuzie]

I love it when two of my favourite subjects(linguistics and dinos) come together in one video! 😁