Answer:
The names you refer to are called scientific names, or "binomial names", because they have two parts, the generic (genus) name and the specific epithet. The two together form the species name.
Binomial nomenclature got its start in the mid-1800s with the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus; he sort of invented binomials by accident, but everyone liked them and they caught on. There are separate sets of rules for naming animals, plants, and bacteria, and the first two start out with the names given by Linnaeus. Of course, a lot more species have been discovered and named since then.
Linnaeus wrote in Latin, which was the language of scholarship in Europe back then, and so scientific names still are given a Latin form (even though many of them are not taken from Latin words).
All three sets of rules say that a name is given by the first person to describe a new species. Usually that new species will be assigned by the discoverer to an existing genus; for example, I and my dissertation adviser described a new species in the genus Encelia, shrubby plants related to sunflowers. We called it Encelia densifolia.
Sometimes a new species doesn't fit any known genus, so the person who describes it gets to name a new genus as well. It's not allowed to name a genus without naming a species in it.
The person describing the new species is not always the person who discovered it. Sometimes the person describing it will name it after the person who discovered it. For example, Limnanthes douglasii was named by the Scottish botanist Robert Brown after his colleague, the explorer David Douglas, who collected the plant in California.
Explanation:
Hope this helps, Sorry if it doesn't!!
