fauna

The term 'fauna' originates from the name of a Roman goddess, Fauna, who was the sister, wife, or female counterpart of the rustic god Faunus. Faunus was associated with forests, fields, and fertility, and was the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Pan. In the 18th century, the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus adopted 'Fauna' as a collective title for the animal life of a region, deliberately creating a parallel to 'Flora', the goddess of flowers and plants. Thus, the modern scientific meaning evolved from a proper name into an abstract collective noun for all animal life in a given context.

The word is a simplex loanword from Latin. It cannot be meaningfully segmented into productive English morphemes without altering its spelling or obscuring its origin.