Scientific names are constructed in Latin, and therefore need to follow the
rules of Latin. The genus is a noun, and therefore has a gender
(masculine, feminine or neuter). As Dave has mentioned the gender has very
little to do with the thing being named: it's only of grammatical
relevance. If the species or sub species is an adjective, its gender needs
to agree to that of the genus: *passer domesticus *is the perfect example,
as these are a real Latin noun and adjective, and conform to the masculine
gender of *passer* in ancient Latin. The endings of adjectives in the
nominative form are not restricted to *-us, -a*, *-um. *However, other
adjective constructions (eg ending in-*is*) are the same in masculine or
feminine, and relatively few genera are neuter (although, incidentally, the
word *genus* itself is neuter, which is why its plural ends in a).
Where the name is based on a real Latin word, one would expect it to retain
the gender, so *plocepasser *is also masculine. However, while *cygnus *is
"correctly" masculine, *d**endrocygna* (literally "tree swan") is feminine.
One can only suppose that this was at the whim of William Swainson in his
original description of the genus (it seems odd that he used *cygnus*anyway:
*dendronetta*, say, would have seemed more obvious as they're not swans).
Meanwhile, as Dave points out, many scientific names are not really Latin
words or compounds of Latin words. A very high proportion of them are
derived from Ancient Greek, eg *daphoenositta chrysoptera, *both parts of
which are compound Greek words converted into Latin. However, again, the
original gender rules don't always apply; Ancient Greek confuses the issue
further in that some nouns can be either masculine or feminine.
Unfortunately, an example of this is *ornis*, bird. Similarly, where
the Latin name of the genus has been concocted from sources other than
Greek or Latin eg *puffinus *or *pseudobulweria*, the gender seems to have
been a matter for the describer.
Note also that the species and sub-species part of the scientific/Latin
name is often not an adjective: frequently it is a genitive noun, as
in *d**endrocygna
eytoni*, "Eyton's whistling duck" or *aerodramus vulcanorum, "*swiftlet of
the volcanoes", in which case the construction depends upon the declension
and number of the species rather than the gender of the genus; or sometimes
another nominative noun: *vanellus miles,* the soldier lapwing.
Kevin Stracey
On 5 July 2012 20:50, Philip Veerman <> wrote:
> I understand about the idea of matching the "gender" between the 2 or 3
> words. I see it would apply equally to species, as well as sub species
> names. However I for one, can't understand who or how anyone decides or
> identifies what is the "gender" of the noun word (I assume this usually or
> always is the genus name) to start with. I assume many genus names were
> given historically after the concept of what is male and female was maybe
> not assigned. This is probably way too complicated to explain and probably
> way off topic but I wonder is there a simple answer? A quick look at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature
> and scrolling to the section on Gender Alignment doesn't really help me,
> apart from saying with an example on butterflies, that maybe there is no
> clear agreement or reason for this.
>
> Philip
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> On Behalf Of Dave Torr
> Sent: Wednesday, 4 July 2012 3:17 PM
> To: Carl Billingham
> Cc: Birding Aus
> Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Latin sub-species names - why the change
> inendings?
>
>
> Basically it is all to do with gender - not of the bird but the name. in
> Latin nouns can be male or female and the describing adjective (which is
> what the subspecies bit is) must match the gender - and typically this
> involves changing an -us or -um to -a or vice versa. Look at
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclaturean
> dscroll
> down to Gender Alignment for a better explanation. IOC are just correcting
> some errors (or introducing new ones!)
>
> On 4 July 2012 15:11, Carl Billingham <> wrote:
>
> > I'm too young/common to have had the classical education so I flounder
> > a bit with Latin;-)
> >
> > I have noticed that the new IOC list has changed a couple of the
> > endings on sub-species names. For example with the Shy Heathwren,
> > cauta to cautus and halmaturina to halmaturinus. Yet the same endings
> > haven't changed for other birds such as Little Wattlebird on Kangaroo
> > Island are still ssp halmaturina. Can somebody please explain what
> > the difference is and what the rule is for whether they should end
> > with an 'a' or 'us'. Thanks in advance, Carl
> > ===============================
>
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