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Little Kingfisher scientific name

To: Carl Clifford <>
Subject: Little Kingfisher scientific name
From: Geoff Bowen <>
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:58:40 +0000
Hi all

This illustrates one of my pet hates about scientific names: they are just that, scientific names. They may be Latin, Greek or coined, so my contention is why does the specific name have to follow the gender of the generic ? I think it would be much more sensible to leave the specific name alone once allocated & ignore any gender agreement because the name is scientific !

We certainly would not have the mess over Little Kingfisher. If Temmick named it Ceyx pusilla, then so be it. The genus might change, but leave the specific alone.

Cheers

Geoff Bowen
Norwich UK

on my way to Oz tomorrow evening !

Carl Clifford wrote:
That would be right. I just ran pusilla and pusillus through a couple of on-line Latin dictionarys, and pusillus is the male adjective. Looks like Temmink was not as good at Latin as he thought I am sticking with pusillus.

Carl Clifford


On 31/10/2008, at 2:26 PM, m("ozemail.com.au","birder");"> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 02:06:06PM +1100, Carl Clifford wrote:
Call it whatever you like, because whichever name you use, someone
will say you are wrong.

My knowledge of Latin is mostly limited to what I learnt from Monty
Python's "Life of Brian", but I remember reading in C&B 2008 that
similar name changes are due to Latin grammatical gender.

According to Wikipedia, Ceyx was "the son of Eosphorus and the king
of Thessaly", so presumably the genus name is also masculine.
That would make "C. pusillus" the technically correct specific name
- "pusilla" should be feminine.  (However there are some exceptions
e.g.  "nauta" - sailor - is masculine.)


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