Graeco-Latin hybrids (was: Teknonyms)

tomhchappell wrote:
 > --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@M...> wrote:
[snip]
 >>metronymics
 >
 >
 > (Matronym, not metronym, is what you meant, I'm sure.)

I'm darn sure Philip meant 'metronym' - he does know Greek!

 > (what would a "metronym" be?

What do you mean be "would be"? The word 'metronym' is perfectly good
_English_, as a reference to any half-decent dictionary should show.

 > Naming someone after how tall or heavy he/she is?
Eh??

 > Naming someone after the closest metropolis?)

'metropolis' is Greek for "MOTHER city".
====================================

Jim Henry wrote:
[snip]
> Metronym gets 270+ Ghits to matronym's 700+;
Groan.

> but
> since many of the former references are in reference
> works they don't seem to be casual misspellings.
> I suspect metronym is actually the earlier form
> and matronym is more recent,
Yes, so am I. I guess the hybrid 'matronym' arose from those with no
Greek, but were familiar with Latin-based words such as 'matrilinear',
'matricide' etc.

>  "Matronym" seems to be one of those Greek/Latin hybrids
> like "television".
It is.
=================================

Mark J. Reed wrote:
[snip]

 > Or, my personal (least) favorite, "hexadecimal" - chosen over the more
 > linguistically consistent (albeit still demonstrably artificial)
 > "sexadecimal" to avoid having "sex" in the word.  *sigh*

Humph - altho we have _sexaginta_ (60), _sexagesimus_ (60th) etc, the
use of -a- as an infix between 'sex' and another morpheme is not
productive in Latin. The Latin for 16 is 'sedecim'.

But it should be noted that 'decimal' is derived from the Latin
_ordinal_ number 'decimus' (not the cardinal 'decem'); 16th was two
words 'sextus decimus'. If a word is used as a prefix the normal
connective infix in Latin is-i-, thus the purely Latin derived form
would be *sextidecimal*

In fact a Google for 'sextidecimal' will confirm this.
	:=)
--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

Replies