in early february 2020, the international committee on the taxonomy of viruses' coronavirus study group gave sars-cov-2 its official name, for sudden acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus number two. before that, people called the virus "2019-ncov," for "novel (new) coronavirus that appeared in 2019." the study group chose this name because the new virus was so similar to another virus that was already called sars-cov with no number.