300 years ago today (according to our present-day calendar) Carl Linnaeus was born. The great botanist—who is remembered as both a father of modern ecology and as the father of modern taxonomy—was praised by such notables as the French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Swedish dramatist August Strindberg, and German writer Johannes von Goethe. (来源：英语学习门户网站EnglishCN.com)

But today we come not to praise Linnaeus but to parse his various names. When Linnaeus was born, surnames were not common in Sweden. His father had been known as Nils Ingemarsson (Nils, son of Ingmar) until he attended the University at Lund with the goal of becoming a clergyman. Needing a proper surname, Nils gave himself the Latinized name Linnaeus, after the Linden tree on the family property (which was a warden tree, a very old tree believed to protect the land and people from bad luck).

So when Carl was born, he was given the surname Linnaeus. When he, in turn, enrolled at his father's alma mater, he registered in full Latin form: Carolus Linnaeus. Then, in 1761, after he had earned some measure of renown for his work Latinizing and simplifying scientific nomenclature, Linnaeus was raised to the rank of nobility and took yet another name: Carl von Linne.