Scientific and Common Names
In the famous 10th edition of Systema Naturae of 1758, Carl Linnaeus cited descriptions by Albertus Seba and by Laurens Theodorus Gronovius to erect the distinct species murina of his new genus Boa, which contained eight other species, including Boa constrictor. The generic name Boa came from an ancient Latin word for a type of large snake. The first specimens of Boa murina were of immature individuals from 2.5 to 3 feet (75 to 90 cm) in length. In 1830, Johann Georg Wagler erected the separate genus Eunectes "good swimmer" for Linnaeus’s Boa murina after more and larger specimens were known and described. Because of the masculine gender of Eunectes, the feminine Latin specific name murina was changed to murinus.
Linnaeus almost certainly chose the scientific name Boa murina based on the original Latin description given by A. Seba in 1735: "Serpens testudinacea americana, murium insidiator" . The Latin adjective murinus (murina) in this case would mean "of mice" or "connected with mice," understood in context as "preying on mice," and not as "mouse-gray-colored" (another possible meaning of Latin murinus) as now often wrongly indicated for E. murinus. Early English-language sources, such as George Shaw, referred to the Boa murina as the "rat boa" and the Penny Cyclopaedia (Vol. 5) entry for Boa explained: "The trivial name murina was given to it from being said to lie in wait for mice." Linnaeus described the appearance of the Boa murina in Latin as "rufus maculis supra rotundatis" and made no reference to a gray coloration. Early descriptions of the green anaconda by different authors variously referred to the general color as brown, glaucous, green, or gray.
Common names for Eunectes murinus include green anaconda, anaconda, common anaconda and water boa.
Local names in South America include the Spanish term mata-toro, meaning "bull killer", and the Native American terms sucuri (Tupi) and yaqumama in the Peruvian Amazon, which means "mother of the water" in the Quechua language of the jungle people Yaqurunas or "water people". In Trinidad, it has been traditionally referred to as the huille or huilla.
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