 Historically, the dodo was assigned the genus "Didus", now a junior synonym of "Raphus".In 1848, a new species within the now defunct genus "Didus", "D. nazarenus", was named by Hugh Edwin Strickland and Alexander Gordon Melville.To house their new species, as well as the other species known at the time, Strickland and Melville named the subfamily Didinae.