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Naming

Charles Hamilton Smith is credited with the name Rangifer for the reindeer genus, which Albertus Magnus used in his De animalibus, fol. Liber 22, Cap. 268: "Dicitur Rangyfer quasi ramifer". This word may go back to the Sámi word raingo. Carl Linnaeus chose the word tarandus as the specific epithet, making reference to Ulisse Aldrovandi 's Quadrupedum omnium bisulcorum historia fol. 859–863, Cap. 30: De Tarando (1621). However, Aldrovandi and Conrad Gessner thought that rangifer and tarandus were two separate animals. In any case, the tarandos name goes back to Aristotle and Theophrastus.

The use of the terms reindeer and caribou for essentially the same animal can cause confusion, but the ICUN clearly delineates the issue: "Reindeer is the European name for the species of Rangifer, while in North America, Rangifer species are known as Caribou." The word reindeer is an anglicized version of the Old Norse words hreinn ("reindeer") and dýr ("animal") and has nothing to do with reins. The word caribou comes through French, from the Mi'kmaq qalipu, meaning "snow shoveler", and refers to its habit of pawing through the snow for food.

Because of its importance to many cultures, Rangifer and some of its species and subspecies have names in many languages. Inuvialuit of the western Canadian Arctic and Inuit of the eastern Canadian Arctic, who speak different dialect of the Inuit languages, both call the barren-ground caribou tuktu. The Wekʼèezhìi (Tłı̨chǫ) people, a Dene (Athapascan) group, call the Arctic caribou Ɂekwǫ̀ and the boreal woodland caribou tǫdzı. The Gwichʼin (also a Dene group) have over 24 distinct caribou-related words.

Reindeer are also called tuttu by the Greenlandic Inuit and hreindýr, sometimes rein, by the Icelanders.