CHAT: The Skinny on Latin names (Warning: Long)

This was on the Discovery Channels website. Since it deals with naming
things in Latin, i thought you all might find it interesting.



Latin Names for Living Things


                     By Hannah Holmes

             "Linnaeus had a thing for order,"
             Florida botanist and Latin coach
             Mark Garland says appreciatively
             of the 18th-century Swedish
             botanist. "He tried to name all the
             plants. And all the animals." In the
             time of Linnaeus, Latin was the
             language of the sciences. In the
             time of Garland, Latin is the
             language that drives scientists to
             drink.

             Although science still relies on
             Linnaeus' Latin-based system for
             naming animals, the average
             scientist no longer knows aspersa
             from elegans. (The first means
             "scattered," as in spots; the
             second is "elegant.") So, while
             naming a new species may
             constitute a great moment in the
             life of a zoologist (animals) or a
             botanist (plants), it may also herald
             a moment of great
             embarrassment.

             "There are some pretty atrocious
             mistakes," says Garland, who
             offers his services to botanists
             who increasingly spurn the
             language that used to be de
             rigueur for science scholars.


        But first let's review the many little rules to this
                           game.
                              .

             Linnaeus decreed that every
             species should have a moniker
             composed of a "genus" name and
             a "specific epithet." The cougar,
             for instance, shares the genus
             name "Felis" with all other felines
             (cats). The cougar's specific
             epithet, which is his alone, is
             concolor, meaning same-colored.
             The disorder sewn by such
             synonyms as cougar, catamount,
             mountain lion, panther and puma is
             swept away by Felis concolor. The
             "genus" name is always
             capitalized; the specific epithet is
             not; and the whole thing is put in
             italics.

             That's the easy part.

             Latin is one of those languages
             that offers innumerable endings for
             each word, and each ending
             changes that word's relationship to
             the other words in the sentence.
             Goof up your endings, and your
             new bug could be stuck with the
             name "smith of Butterfly," instead
             of "Butterfly of smith."

             Take, for example, Myotis
             auriculus. Myotis describes a
             "mouse-eared" genus of bats. No
             problem there. But the namer
             choked on a specific epithet
             meaning "little-eared." Auriculacea
             would have done the trick, but
             perhaps all those ending vowels
             were off-putting. So the bat is
             stuck with auriculus, which is
             easier to pronounce, means
             nothing at all and translates roughly
             as, "Mouse-eared bloohoo."

             And these names do stick. The
             rules decree that once a
             description and Latin name of a
             new species have appeared in a
             scientific journal, it's official and
             eternal, grammatical errors
             included.


     But it's possible that the bat could have fared even
          worse at the hands of someone who was
                        Latin-literate.
                              .

             That's because, for all their
             niggling detail, the international
             zoology naming rules say little
             about the nature of the names, as
             long as they're "Latinized."

             So an unloved yellow daisy was
             recently named damnxanthodium,
             probably a comment on the
             number of yellow-daisy species
             that look maddeningly similar, says
             Garland. In the beetle genus, Agra,
             there is a species named Agra
             vation. There is a genus called
             Aha, and a species named Aha
             ha. There is a fish named for
             Frank Zappa, Zappa confluentus,
             and an owl louse named for
             cartoonist Gary Larson, Stigiphilus
             garylarsoni. There is a genus of
             crustaceans named for Godzilla,
             Godzillius. There are genera of
             moths named Polichisme and
             Ochisme ("ch," in Latin, is
             pronounced as "k").


        Linnaeus himself was not above naming nasty
               weeds after people he disliked.
                              .

             And while the zoology code now
             discourages names that are
             "intemperate," or that could "give
             offense on any ground," it appears
             scientists are more respectful of
             tradition than of modern rules of
             etiquette.

             But if there's one aspect of
             tradition that makes researchers
             tremble more than Latin itself, it's
             the rule of priority: Regardless of
             who finds a bug or bluebell first, the
             first to publish a name and
             description for it wins the day.

             So imagine graduate-student Jane
             discovers a new genus and
             species of beetle, and out of
             gratitude to her professor June,
             describes it long and carefully, and
             sends off a paper naming the bug
             Junym chisingup. Now, imagine
             her slimeball colleague Betty steals
             a peek at Jane's notes, and trots
             out to "discover" this beetle
             herself. Betty dashes off a
             description of the beetle, and
             hands it to a pal who edits a beetle
             journal. It's unfortunate and unfair,
             but that beetle's name is going to
             be known forever as Ukan
             chismybutt.


                         Vocabulary

       nomen nudum, n. If you have a new animal but
     no time to publish a description and name, there is
      a way to "reserve" a name for it. (Scientists who
        work with insects can have large backlogs of
      unnamed species.) Say you want to save a name
        for your blue bug. When you're writing a paper
       about black bugs, find an excuse to mention the
       blue bug's intended name. It becomes a nomen
      nudum, or "naked name." The name's not official
      until you publish a description of the bug, but your
             colleagues will respect your claim.



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                    "Bailando en el fuego con un gran deseo" - India

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