Rankless English orthography AND proper names

[Gurcharan Singh]

> Thomas Schlemmermeyer writes
>"Rosaceae" is a proper name and has therefore to be used without definite
>article. This has, so far, nothing to do with the question whether Rosaceae
be
>a clade, a monophyletic group, a taxon, or anything else. From a linguistic
>point of view it is simply a proper name.

We need not prefix an article when writing about Rosaceae because it is a
common name and we have only one Rosaceae. On the other hand when we are
writing about a family (or for that matter clade, lineage or group) there
could be many (Rosaceae, Brassicaceae, Malvaceae, etc.), and we have to
specify the particular family. Thus we write "The family Rosaceae".

>And that leads me to a problem: Why do those taxonomists always write
>scientific proper names with capital letters (Rosaceae), while the
>corresponding vernacular names (roses) are usually written without capital
>letters?

There are not "those taxonomists". All taxonomists start  scienctific names
with capital letter because they are following ICBN, ICZN or ICNB as the
case may be. Also we are dealing with names which are constructed using
rules of Latin grammer.
Dr. Gurcharan Singh
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