Linnaean taxonomy
Two years after John Ray's death Carolus Linnaeus (1707 - 1778) was born. His great work, the Systema Naturae, ran through twelve editions during his lifetime (1st ed. 1735). He is best known for his introduction of a method of modern classification; he created systematic zoology and botany in their present form.
Linnaeus adopted Ray's conception of species, but he made the concept a practical reality by insisting that every species must have a unique Latin binomen, that is, a double name — the first half to be the name of the genus, common to several species, and the second half to be a single word, which is called the specific epithet. This convention is now referred to as binomial nomenclature, and the name formed from the two parts is known as the scientific name or "systematic name" of a species. When a species in further subdivided, the trinomial nomenclature is used. For a name to be scientifically complete, an author label and publication details have to be added.
Before Linnaeus, long many-worded names had been used, sometimes with one additional adjective, sometimes with another, so that no true names were fixed and accepted. Linnaeus' system made it easy to identify unambiguously any given species of plant or animal. He proceeded further to introduce into his system a series of groups: genus, order, class.
The Linnaeus System works by placing each organism into a layered hierarchy of groups. Each group at a given layer is composed of a set of groups from the layer directly below. Simply knowing the two-part scientific name makes it possible to determine the other six layers.
The groupings (taxa) of taxonomy from most general to most specific are:
Several acronym 
