Scientific Names of Greek Derivation

Abstract

I AM glad that Sir Clifford Allbutt, in NATURE for October 20, p. 590, supports the spelling “deinosaur,” although Owen wrote Dinosauria. Only a week ago I heard a university student pronounce the word as “dinnosaur.” Wherever pronunciation can be helped by correcting current forms the correction is obviously of service. From this point of view we may pardon, even if we regret, Miocene and Pliocene. No one, however, has attempted to write “Plistocene.” We have for some centuries converted the Latin forms ae and oe (for the Greek ai and oi) into the forms æ and œ in manuscript and in print; but this has no classical authority and can be abandoned with much advantage, as has been done in modern Latin texts. The Greek diphthong or semi-diphthong ei could not well be shortened into one letter in our script, and this fact provides an inconsistency for those who join a and o to e in transliterations from Greek or Latin. Where the word has become anglicised in form, as cœnosarc, or where, like cœnenchyma, it is not a generic or specific name, the diphthong no doubt will remain compounded; but we may, I think with wisdom, write Coeloptychium and Taenia. Moeritherium is a case that needs attention. The British Museum, which has an honourable vested interest in the mortal remains of this fascinating creature, writes the o and the e separately. The Americans, and now the Japanese, adopt the compounded form.