Nomenclature
The Atlantic salmon was given its scientific binomial name by zoologist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus in 1758. Later, the differently coloured smolts were found to be the same species.
The name, Salmo salar, is from the Latin salmo, meaning salmon, and salar, meaning leaper, according to M. Barton, but more likely meaning "resident of salt water". Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1879) translates salar as a kind of trout from its use in the Idylls of the poet Ausonius (4th century CE).
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