The Arabs say خروف, the Catalans say ovella, the Chinese say 羊, but the Spanish apparently say Ovis orientalis aries

The English-language Wikipedia’s article naming policy follows the encyclopaedia tradition and is sensible and straightforward:

Articles are normally titled using the name which is most commonly used to refer to the subject of the article in English-language reliable sources. This includes usage in the sources used as references for the article.

Article titles should be neither vulgar nor pedantic. Common usage in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms, whether the official name, the scientific name, the birth name, the original name or the trademarked name.

The following are examples of common names^[2] that Wikipedia uses as article titles instead of a more elaborate, formal, or scientific alternative,

• Bill Clinton (not “William Jefferson Clinton”)
• Snoop Dogg (not “Cordozar Calvin Broadus”)
• Hulk Hogan (not “Terry Gene Bollea”)
• Venus de Milo (not “Aphrodite of Melos”)
• Caffeine (not 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione)
• Guinea pig (not Cavia porcellus)
• Nazi Party (not Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

The Spanish-language version is less explicit but its message is the same:

En general, los artículos deberían residir en el nombre más comúnmente usado para el tema sobre el que el artículo trata. Otros nombres menos utilizados, pero que podrían ser referidos, deberían nombrarse en el artículo y ser páginas de redirección, es decir, páginas cuyo único contenido sea #REDIRECCIÓN [[artículo principal]].

So how did the Spanish-language entry for sheep end up being called Ovis orientalis aries, which no Spanish speaker in his right mind would describe as the common name?

I suppose one potential justification would be that both carnero and oveja have been widely used to designate the domestic sheep.
[
The DRAE says that carnero is used to refer to the species and oveja to a female carnero, and carnero is indeed used in this way in for example a diary of the Jamancia rebellion in Barcelona. The DRAE’s generalisation is however patently wrong: many current-day speakers have no idea what a carnero is and use oveja indiscriminately to refer to rams, ewes, wethers, lambs etc as well as frequently to goats, and there is substantial historical evidence for this blow against the tendency to masculine assimilation, as in for example this passage from Andrés Bello’s excellent 1847 Gramática de la lengua castellana, destinada al uso de los americanos:

Cuando hai dos formas para los dos sexos, nos valemos de la masculina para designar la especie, prescindiendo del sexo: así hombre, autor, poeta, leon, se adaptan a todos los casos en que se habla de cosas que no conciernen particularmente a la mujer o a la hembra… Pero esta regla no es universal, pues a veces se prefiere la forma femenina para la designación de la especie, como en paloma, gallina, oveja. Fuera de eso, cuando ce habla de personas apareadas lo mas usual es juntar ambas formas para la designación del par, el presidente i la presidenta, el rejidor i la rejidora; bien que se dice los padres por el padre i la madre, los reyes por el rei i la reina, los abuelos paternos o maternos por el abuelo i la abuela en una de las dos líneas, los esposos por el esposo i la esposo. Muchas otras observaciones pudieran hacerse sobre esta materia; pero los ejemplos anteriores darán alguna luz para facilitar el estudio del uso, que es en ella bastante vario i caprichoso.

So a possible explanation might be disagreement over the relative merits of two reasonable choices, carnero and oveja, leading to the selection of something of no use to anyone, Ovis orientalis aries. One could go on to compare this the process that led to the PP electing Mariano Rajoy; or to the lack of a regional airport strategy, which has led to Spanish local authorities competing with each other to bribe Ryanair, whose biggest market is now unsurprisingly Spain; or one could suggest renaming the English article on sheep to accommodate Australian use of jumbuck.
]

But the use of scientific rather than common names on the Spanish-language Wikipedia appears to operate even when there are no feasible reasons for it: perro is Canis lupus familiaris, caballo is Equus ferus caballus, and, perhaps silliest of all in its reductionism, humano is Homo sapiens.

So why is some deranged individual or collective doing this? Is it an elitist project to make information inaccessible to non-Latinists? Have butchers been forewarned that the next generation of customers may use rather unusual vocabulary when ordering their cuts?

–Good morning, can I have a pound of loin of Sus scrofa domestica?
–Certainly Sir, would you like it wrapped or in anum?

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