Yeah, crazy how for instance in German everything has a gender. Bedroom, house,
horse, car, train, ship ( which are der, which are die, and which are das?) --
makes it all much more difficult. At least we only have " she's alright mate"
for everything. I learnt some German at school and it made everything so much
harder having to remember the gender of inanimate objects. Apparently we have
masculine trains while our hair is neuter. Totally illogical.
Wallie.
-----Original Message-----
From: Birding-Aus On Behalf Of
Martin Butterfield
Sent: Tuesday, 23 June 2015 9:15 AM
To: Carl Clifford
Cc: Birding-Aus
Subject: White-cheeked Honeyeater
According to "Australian Bird Names a complete guide" by Ian Fraser and Jeannie
Gray the Philedon element comes from the Greek for "attractive", The Cinnyris
bit does link back to sunbird .
The business of gender of names all makes me glad we speak English, as with all
the irrationalities in that language, at least we avoided daftness like having
to decide what gender to apply to words such as the French "l'internet"!
Martin
Martin Butterfield
http://franmart.blogspot.com.au/
On 22 June 2015 at 21:24, Carl Clifford <> wrote:
> Hi Clive,
>
> Bit of an update on the mystery. I have been doing a bit of a rummage
> through the library, and it seems that Phylidoyris is a bit of a
> manmade word. It comes from the French, Phylédon (Honeyeater), which
> comes from the Latin Philedon (honeyeater), cobbled together with the
> Latin Cynnyris (sunbird). No wonder the taxonomists couldn't decide
> which sex the word was. Probably should have been called nigrum, the neuter
> form.
>
> Carl Clifford
>
>
> > On 22 Jun 2015, at 4:17 pm, Clive Nealon <> wrote:
> >
> > Greetings,
> > Can someone explain, please, why HANZAB, Pizzey & Knight (8th Ed),
> > and Morcombe field guides list White-cheeked Honeyeater as
> > Phylidonyris
> nigra,
> > and
> > IOC and Christidis & Boles list it as Phylidonyris niger?
> > Thanks.
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