Homo sapiens [ˌhoʊmoʊ ˈseɪpienz] 由2个拉丁单词组成：
home : 意为“人属”， any of a genus (Homo) of hominids that includes modern humans (H. sapiens) and several extinct related species (such as H. erectus and H. habilis) sapiens 意为“聪敏” wise
Homo sapiens （拉丁语 wise man） ，智人， 是人属下的唯一现存物种。形态特征比直立人更为进步。分为早期智人和晚期智人。智人是属于人属的几个物种之一，但它是唯一没有灭绝的物种。现在人都来自智人人属。
现代生物分类之父卡洛勒斯·林奈（Carolus Linnaeus）于1758年使用了“智人”这个名字。人们早就知道，与其他已知的生物相比，人类在身体上更像灵长类动物。但在当时，把人类像自然界其他生物一样进行分类是一种大胆的行为。
林奈只关注身体结构的相似性，他所面临的问题只是将智人与类人猿(大猩猩、黑猩猩、猩猩和长臂猿)区分开来，而类人猿在许多身体和认知特征上都与人类不同。(查尔斯·达尔文(Charles Darwin)的进化论专著《物种起源》(on the Origin of Species)将在101年后问世。)
早期智人过去曾叫古人，生活在距今25万～4万年前，主要特征是脑容量大；晚期智人（新人）是解剖结构上的现代人。大约从距今四五万年前开始出现。
The name Homo sapiens was applied in 1758 by the father of modern biological classification (see taxonomy), Carolus Linnaeus. It had long been known that human beings physically resemble the primates more closely than any other known living organisms, but at the time it was a daring act to classify human beings within the same framework used for the rest of nature.
Linnaeus, concerned exclusively with similarities in bodily structure, faced only the problem of distinguishing H. sapiens from apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, and gibbons), which differ from humans in numerous bodily as well as cognitive features. (Charles Darwin’s treatise on evolution, On the Origin of Species, would come 101 years later.) ( from britannica.com)