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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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
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Philip
It has very little to do with gender as you normally think of it. But Latin and French (that I know of – I think other non-English languages as well) assign all nouns to a gender of male, female or (in some cases?) neuter. Nothing to do with the “Sex” of the object – you could have the word for milkman for example being “feminine” (been too long since I studied French or Latin so I can’t give any real examples). So for example as the referenced article says – Equus is a masculine Latin noun – whatever the “sex” of the horse. And so any qualifying adjectives must be masculine.
Complicating this is the fact that some Genus names are made up or of non-Latin origin!
Hope this helps a little – taking me back lots of years to my schooldays!
Dave
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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_Nomenclatureandscroll down to Gender Alignment for a better explanation. IOC are just correcting some errors (or introducing new ones!)
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