The name first appeared in 1954, when Austrian zoologist Eduard Paul Tratz and German biologist Heinz Heck proposed it as a new and distinct generic term for pygmy chimpanzees.
The name is believed to have originated from a mistake in writing on a shipping crate from the town of Bolobo in the lower Congo River, from the vicinity of which came the first chimpanzee specimens brought to Europe.
The generic name paniscus comes from the diminutive of the word Pan, which in Greek mythology denoted the protective god of forests and fields, guarding shepherds and their flocks, hailing from Arcadia.
