photos pictures of animals "Fauna" comes from the Latin names of Fauna, a Roman goddess of earth and fertility, the Roman god Faunus, and the related forest spirits called Fauns.
All three words are cognates of the name of the Greek god Pan, and panis is the Greek equivalent of fauna. Fauna is also the word for a book that catalogues the animals in such a manner. The term was first used by Linnaeus in the title of his 1745 work Fauna Suecica.
