Derived from an old diminutive of MARTIN. MAXWELL Scottish. From a place name meaning Mack's stream, from the name Mack, a short form of the Scandinavian name MAGNUS, combined with Old English wella stream ...
For the ray-finned fish known as common dolphin, see Mahi-mahi. The common dolphin is the name given to two species (and possibly a third) of dolphin making up the genus Delphinus. Prior to the mid-1990s, most taxonomists only recognised one species in this genus, the common dolphin Delphinus delphis.
Portrait of a Bottlenose Dolphin. As members of the whale family, dolphins are fully aquatic mammals that spend their entire lives underwater. They only need to breath air from the surface once every 5 to 10 minutes using the blow hole at the top of their heads which is like a large nostril. There are almost forty different species of dolphins with the killer whale being the largest. The bottlenose dolphin is the species of Flipper fame that we are most familiar with, and the species that is regularly referred to as simply dolphin. The term dolphin is not synonymous with porpoise. Porpoises are six species within the dolphin family differentiated by their flat teeth.