Midland Naturalist/Volume 01/Scientific Names—I. Form (continued)

by William Bywater Grove

Scientific Names—I. Form.

 

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By W. B. Grove, B.A.

 

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(Continued from page 124.^[1])

 

The third declension differs from the other two, and presents some difficulty. Words of this class have many terminations, but they rarely end in -a, -e, or -er, never in -um. It is chiefly those ending in -us that can be mistaken. The peculiarities of the third declension are that the genitive singular abaya ends in -is, and has very often one syllable more than the nominative; the plural ends in -a or -es, according as the word is, or is not, neuter. It is an invariable rule that the plural of a neuter word ends in -a. For most of the words of this class recourse must be had to the dictionary, but the following table of the chief forms may ba useful. Notice that the true stem seldom appears in the nominative, but may be obtained from the genitive by removing the termination -is. Though there are rules for determining the gender, the only safe course is to refer to the dictionary. Examples of the fourth and fifth declensions are added for the sake of completeness.

Nouns.

The only important adjectives of this type end thus:—

Adjectives.

Thus we have Carduus palustris, Viola palustris, but Comarum palustre; Lotus major, Astrantia major, but Arctium majus; Ranunculus repens, Linaria repens, and Trifolium repens; as an example of the plural we may take Rodentia, the rodent animals.

There are many Greek words also in use, but in many or most cases they are Latinised, and will come under the rules already given. Only two, which do not, can be mentioned here.

Nouns.

Examples are found in polyzoön, plur. polyzoa, and stoma, plur. stomata, the stem of which, as is the case in all Greek nouns ending in a, is formed by adding t to the nominative.

Having obtained the stem of a word, of whatever declension, if we wish to form a derivative, we add to it any termination which expresses the required idea. The only point of importance occurs when this termination begins with a consonant. In this case the letter i is generally inserted, if the word is of Latin, and the letter o, if if is of Greek origin. Thus from the Latin heder-a, "ivy." we get heder-aceus and hederi-folius; but some botanists, wishing probably to retain the a, write hederæfolius. For this there seams to be no classical authority whatever, and it should therefore be avoided, as founded upon a mistaken idea. Other examples are Boragin-aceæ, from borago, linarii-folius, from linaria, anagallidi-folius, from anagallis, formicæ-forme, from formica. As before, some entomologists write formicæ-forme, but the very same persons spell tipuliforme, from tipula, without the a. Similarly from the Greek we get chloro-phyll, morpho-logy, Gastero-poda, &c. This inserted o generally serves as a mark that the roots from which the word is derived are Greek; I say generally, because some words, as Fungology, are hybrids, Fungus being a Latin, and logos, a Greek word. There is one case where this o is inserted, which is seldom suspected. Thus hypnoides is compounded of hypn-um, a moss, and the termination -ides, meaning "resembling, similar to." This termination was used by the Greeks, but, since in very ancient times it began with a consonant having a sound like f or v, it required the insertion of o before it. Thus we should get hypno-fides. This consonant, (called the "lost" Digamma,) ceased to he used by the Greeks thousands of years ago, but they still retained the o, and we follow their example. Thus the o and i in hypnoides belong to distinct syllables: the importance of this will be seen when we come to pronunciation. There are many words used in scientific English of the same kind, e.g., albuminoid, anthropoid, and botryoid. The same termination is sometimes used in the plural in the names of sections of the animal and vegetable kingdoms; thus Crinoidea, from crin-on, "a lily," is really crino-idea, and means "lily-like" animals, and Aroideæ, from ar-um, the cuckoo-pint, means "arum-like" plants. There is another class of words, apparently similar, but really of a different origin, those ending in -idæ or -iadæ, which must not be confounded with those just mentioned. This latter termination was used to designate the children and remoter descendants of any person; thus the Pelopids were the descendants or family of Pelops, and the meaning with which it is employed now is, whether purposely or not, very similar. The Equidæ, for instance, are the descendants of some common original form, which existed in geologic times, to which indeed the name Equus could not be applied, but which was the typo and first foreshadowing of the group of animals to which we now restrict the name, and so far the idea suggested by these terminations is applicable to the ease. It may be noticed that it is customary to use -iadæ for all words ending in -ia, as Crania, Craniadæ, and for all others to affix -idæ to the true stem, as Mactra, Mactridæ; Helix, Helicidæ; Bos, Bovidæ. As usual this rule is sometimes, though without reason, infringed, as in Cerithium, Cerithiadæ; Arca, Arcadæ.

Something, also, must be said about specific names, which are not adjectives. First among these are the so-called complimentary names, used in the genitive case. When the name of a modern man or woman is to be Latinised, the usual plan is to add -us of -ius, as may be most euphonious, for the one, and -a or -ia for the other, with the ordinary genitives. This, of course, does not apply to complimentary generic names, e.g., Linnæa, Hookeria, which are always feminine. Thus, Rafflesia Arnoldi means "Arnold's Rafflesia," and commemorates not only Dr. Joseph Arnold, its discoverer, but also Sir Stamford Raffles, the Governor of Sumatra at the time of its discovery; in Lepidium Smithii two i's are used to produce a smoother sound; Nitophyllum Hutchinsiæ is Miss Hutchins' Nitophyllum. These should always be spelled with a capital letter, as also should adjectives derived from proper names, but in this latter respect practice differs. Both Siiene Angiica and S. anglica are found, and some hare even ventured to write hookerianus. It may be presumed that this license, so foreign to both the English and the classical tongues, has been imported from the Continent, as it is in accordance with the usage of the French and other languages. Still another class of specific names should he written with a capital initial, those which are nouns in the nominative case, which have been for the most part originally the names of genera, as in Potentilla Tormentilla, Poterium Sanguisorba, Hipparchia Tithonus. The last two instances show pointedly that these, not being adjectives, do not necessarily agree in gender with the generic name. There is, finally, the class represented by Pieris brassicæ, which means the Pieris "of the cabbage," because the larva of that butterfly feeds upon the cabbage. These should, properly, not be spelled with a capital, (though this is sometimes done,) and are in the genitive case, either singular or plural, They are most common among the names of Lepidoptera, as Anthocharis cardamines, Sphinx convolvuli, Thecla quercus, but are not wanting in other places. Thus Rosa dumetorum means the rose "of the thickets;" Æeidium compositarum, the Æeidium "of the Compositæ;" and, to take an example from the "Midland Naturalist" of March, Amphistoma hominis, the Amphistoma "of man."

In order to find out the meaning of a scientific term, it is necessary for one not accustomed to the search to form first some idea of the kind of word he has in hand, in doing which it is hoped the previous observations will be of use. The word should then be looked out in the dictionary as a whole; if it he not found, as will very often be the case, it must next he considered what are its probable component parts. In this the inserted i or o is of great assistance, nor should the help which can be obtained from comparison with other words be neglected. Thus the common adjectival terminations, -osus, -ilis, -inus, -anus, -arius, -atus, &c., can be recognised, and their meaning arrived at by the consideration of English words of a similar ending. Moreover, if one or more syllables are found to occur in many different words, it may be presumed that they form a root; compare Cardium, Cardita, Cardiomerpha, and with the latter Callimorpha; Apteryx, Micropteryx, and Microspore; Diplacenthus, and Acanthoides.

These parts should then be looked out separately; but there will often be a considerable amount of search required, and after all there will remain some, the derivation and meaning of which none but a practised investigator could discover, not to mention these which are incorrectly formed, and have in their present shape no meaning whatever. The chief difficulty lies in the Greek roots, for investigating which it is necessary to be acquainted not only with the value of the letters of the Greek alphabet, but also with the conventional changes which are made in expressing a Greek word in English letters. The chief ave given below:—(Greek characters) is generally represented by c, (Greek characters) by y, (Greek characters) by u, (Greek characters) by tar (Greek characters) by æ, and (Greek characters) by æ. The last two are often further degraded into e, as the word becomes more Anglicised, e.g. palæozoic, paleozoic. Here again, of late years, innovations have been made, the result partly of carelessness, partly of a desire to keep more nearly the supposed ancient pronunciation. Thus diœcious and monœcious are sometimes written dioicous and monoicous, the (Greek characters) being represented by oi, instead of by œ; similarly the first syllable of Cainozoic is really the same as the last syllable of Eocene.

It may, perhaps, illustrate the analytic process of finding the derivation of a given word, if we show the reverse, synthetic method of forming a word to represent a given idea. Thus, suppose we wish to invent a generic name which shalt mean "cleft-tooth," we find the Latin for "cleft" is fuss-us, for "tooth" dens, As the dens is to go last, we shall use, not the true stem dent-, but the nominative case; placing the two syllables together, and inserting i, we get Fissidens, the name of a genus of mosses which has the peristome-teeth cleft halfway down. Then comes the question, what is to be the gender of Fissidens. On this point the rule is clear and precise: it must have the same gender as the last component, i.e., since dens is masculine, Fissidens is masculine also. If, however, any termination is added, which generally ends in -us, -a, or -um, it is masculine, feminine, or neuter accordingly. For instance, from the same word dens we get Dentaria, which is feminine.

There are too many words in scientific language which are not formed according to these principles, bet still the vast majority obeys them, and it is for this reason that they concern all students of science, for upon them in great measure depends the pronunciation, as has been already pointed out in one case, and will be further illustrated in the following papers. In conclusion, it may be added that the rules have been founded in every case upon the practice of the best authorities, and, though many pots have been omitted for want of space, it is believed that all the chief variations of usage have been included.

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1. Erratum In May Number (p. 124, bottom line)—For "polyzoon," read "polyzoan," after the analogy of entomostracan, infusorian, &c.