text: Taxonomy The word  is the Middle Latin form of the Greek  (, "tuna, ") – which is in turn derived from  (, "to rush; to dart").  The first written use of the word was by Homer.
  Based on morphology and short-length mitochondrial DNA sequence data, the genus Thunnus is currently classified into two subgenera: Thunnus (Thunnus) (the bluefin group), and Thunnus (Neothunnus) (the yellowfin group). However this classification has been questioned by a recent phylogenetic analysis of nuclear DNA sequence data, which resolved different relationships among species and did not support the traditional definition of the bluefin and yellowfin groups. Specifically, these analyses substantiated the division of Pacific and Atlantic Tuna in two separate species and suggested that Bigeye Tuna were actually a member of subgenus Neothunnus, not subgenus Thunnus. Earlier nuclear ribosomal DNA phylogenetic reconstructions also showed similar results.
  This genus has eight species in two subgenera:
  Subgenus Thunnus (Thunnus):
  Albacore, T. alalunga (Bonnaterre, 1788)
  Southern bluefin tuna, T. maccoyii (Castelnau, 1872)
  Bigeye tuna, T. obesus (Lowe, 1839)
  Pacific bluefin tuna, T. orientalis (Temminck & Schlegel, 1844)
  Atlantic bluefin tuna, T. thynnus (Linnaeus, 1758)
  Subgenus Thunnus (Neothunnus):
  Yellowfin tuna, T. albacares (Bonnaterre, 1788)
  Blackfin tuna, T. atlanticus (Lesson, 1831)
  Longtail tuna, T. tonggol (Bleeker, 1851)