The closest living relatives of the aardvark are the elephant shrews, tenrecs and golden moles. The similarities are based on convergent evolution. The aardvark is not closely related to the South American anteater, despite sharing some characteristics and a superficial resemblance. The aardvark is not closely related to the pig rather, it is the sole extant representative of the obscure mammalian order Tubulidentata, in which it is usually considered to form one variable species of the genus Orycteropus, the sole surviving genus in the family Orycteropodidae.

The name of the aardvarks's order, Tubulidentata, comes from the tubule-style teeth. The name Orycteropus means burrowing foot, and the name afer refers to Africa. The name 'aardvark' is Afrikaans ( Afrikaans pronunciation: ), comes from earlier Afrikaans (erdvark) and means 'earth pig' or 'ground pig' ( aarde: earth/ground, vark: pig), because of its burrowing habits. The aardvark is sometimes colloquially called the 'African ant bear', 'anteater' (not to be confused with the South American anteater), or the 'Cape anteater' after the Cape of Good Hope.

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