[Taxacom] Not news: Latin scholarship statistically zero

[Roger Burks]

I'm a bit worried by that epithet, actually, since Article 11.9.4 reads as
follows:

11.9.4. A species-group name must not consist of words related by a
conjunction nor include a sign that cannot be spelled out in the Latin
alphabet (see Article
11.2<http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted-sites/iczn/code/index.jsp?nfv=true&article=11#2>;
for the use of the hyphen, see Article
32.5.2.4.3<http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted-sites/iczn/code/index.jsp?nfv=true&article=32#5.2.4.3>
).

Examples. Expressions like "rudis planusque" (in which "-que" is a
conjunction) and "?-album" are not admissible as species-group names.


On Sat, Apr 6, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Curtis Clark <lists at curtisclark.org> wrote:

> I was looking at an article on PLoS One about a couple of new genera of
> parabasalids (notable outside parabasalid-land because they are named
> Cthulhu and Cthylla), and I was immediately struck by their epithets,
> respectively macrofasciculumque and microfasciculumque. Now I don't even
> complain much any more about mixing Greek and Latin roots, but I was
> flabbergasted by the "que" ending; it ordinarily translates as "and",
> placed before the noun in English that it follows in Latin (Senatus
> Populusque Romanus = the Roman Senate and People). Technically it's
> called an enclitic particle. So I'm thinking "big and bundle?", "Cthulhu
> and big bundle?"
>
> Well, I learned much to my chagrin a number of years ago that I don't
> always know everything I think I know, so I decided to look it up. Turns
> out it's from Exodus 12:22 in the Vulgate (Latin Bible): "fasciculumque
> hysopi tinguite sanguine qui est in limine et aspergite ex eo
> superliminare et utrumque postem nullus vestrum egrediatur ostium domus
> suae usque mane", which translates in the King James Version as "And ye
> shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the
> bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that
> is in the bason; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house
> until the morning." Looking at Bible translations that were strongly
> informed by the Latin Bible, most start with "And"; none of the others
> that I looked at did. I have no knowledge of Hebrew to know whether that
> conjunction was present in the original.
>
> It gets stranger. I put "bunch" into Google Translate and it gives
> "Fasciculumque" (with that precise capitalization). Google Translate not
> unexpectedly makes heavy use of the Vulgate and many classic Latin texts
> in their Latin-English-Latin translations. It translate "fasciculum" as
> "packet" and "fascis" as bundle. "fascicula" is "bundles",
> "fasciculorum" is "files", and "fasciculis" is "packages". For those of
> you unfamiliar with Latin, these are all inflected forms of the same word.
>
> It's not surprising that people use Google Translate to find out Latin;
> I use it for other languages all the time. And it's not surprising that
> Google Translate gives different meanings for different inflections of a
> word, since it equivalences phrases from known translations rather than
> translating words grammatically; that's why it does a better job than
> most other automatic translation programs.
>
> And so we get "macrofasciculumque". The same Google that gives the
> less-than-useful translation enabled me to research all this in just a
> few minutes. So I'm not exactly complaining.
>
> Here's the article, which is very interesting (parabasalids are cool):
> http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0058509
>
> For those of you unfamiliar with Cthulhu:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu
>
> --
> Curtis Clark        http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark
> Biological Sciences                   +1 909 869 4140
> Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona CA 91768
>
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