Fauna and flora species are not classic proper nouns, because they are not unique identities (except perhaps the last Spix Macaw). So David’s list includes references to many things of which there is only one: geographical localities (Ulura), planets (Uranus), corporations (Unilever), institutions (United Nations), buildings (Unilever House), bridges (Sydney Harbour Bridge), people (Julia Gillard). But, you might say, there will be more than one Julia Gillard in the world. The point is, though, that each time you use ‘Julia Gillard’, I’d guarantee you’d be referring to a particular Julia Gillard, not a bunch of julia gillards around the world. Species names, on the other hand, are words/phrases that can refer collectively to all Little Lorikeets, Brown Honeyeaters, Grey Falcons, Great-billed Herons, Splendid Fairy-wrens and so on, in a similar way to ‘the team’ referring to a specific bunch of people. So strictly speaking, if you follow the rules for proper nouns, species names should be lower case. But the world isn’t that simple. Days of the week are generally capitalised, probably because when they are used they are referring to a unique Tuesday (like the unique Julia Gillard). It would therefore be logical to write, ‘We generally meet on tuesdays’ (my spell check automatically capitalised ‘Tuesday’ – point made), because it’s no longer referring to a unique entity. In fact, to the chagrin of many, language is not particularly logical, and any rules such as the capitalization (or not) of species names is, to some extent at least, arbitrary. It’s what keeps language interesting for us linguists.
Rod Gardner ===============================
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