Class 11 · The Living World

Binomial Nomenclature Capitalization Rules — NEET Biology

✅ Asked in NEET 2023
📖 NCERT Source

The first word denoting the genus starts with a capital letter while the specific epithet starts with a small letter. It can be illustrated with the example of Mangifera indica.

🖼️Related NCERT figure: Diagram (PyMuPDF detected)
NCERT Biology · Class 11 · Chapter 1 · Paragraph 13
How NTA Uses This Concept

NTA tests the standardized capitalization rule in binomial nomenclature: the genus name always starts with a capital letter while the specific epithet always starts with a lowercase letter. For example, Mangifera indica is correct, not mangifera indica or Mangifera Indica. Students commonly make mistakes by capitalizing both words, using all lowercase, or reversing the order. To get it right, remember: Genus = Capital, Species = small. This rule is fundamental to scientific naming and NTA has tested it twice (2019, 2023), making it a high-probability concept for identifying correct scientific names in multiple-choice questions.

Solve This NEET Question

This paragraph was tested 2 times in NEET.

Q1 of 2NEET 2023

Which of the following is against the rules of ICBN?

Q2 of 2NEET 2019

The scientific name of Mango is:-

Through deep analysis of NEET and NTA, 88 of 90 questions from the NEET 2026 paper were matched straight from the MedicNEET Biology question bank.

88/90
of the NEET 2026 Biology paper matched from the MedicNEET question bank

MedicNEET's Biology question bank is built from the same NCERT lines NTA picks repeatedly. Not random MCQs — questions crafted exactly like NTA crafts them.

88 of 90 NEET 2026 Biology questions traced to MedicNEET10,000+ Biology questionsHindi + English
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