[Taxacom] Correct spelling of a family name (again...) plus associated higher taxa

[Laurent Raty]

I'd be interested in the answer as well. Under the ICZN:

No derivation is given for the genus-group name in the OD. "Placidia" as 
such is not a Latin word (albeit "placidus" is). In the absence of 
evidence to the contrary, I would tend to treat the name as ending in 
the Latin suffix -ia, which is often used in generic names: this would 
imply the stem is Placidi- under Art. 29.3.1.

However, this is a post-1999 work, thus Art. 29.4 protects the stem 
adopted by the author in the original description, even if this stem 
does not comply with Art. 29.3.1, provided that it is "is formed from 
the name of the type genus as though it were an arbitrary combination of 
letters [Art. 29.3.3]." Placid- (for Placidia) is a stem that would 
comply with Art. 29.3.3, to the extent that it can be interpreted as 
being "the entire generic name with the ending elided". We seem to have 
a problem here, however, which is that the Code does NOT actually appear 
to limit what can be regarded as the "ending" of a word in the context 
of Art. 29.3.3 in any way -- if taken down to the word, a stem P-, with 
the "ending" -lacidia removed, is acceptable under Art. 29.3.3 as well, 
despite this is obviously not desirable at all.

My inclination is to limit the "ending" to that part of the word which 
can be affected by inflection in a Latin or Greek word in the nominative 
case -- that is, never more than the very last vowel and any consonant 
that may follow it. Thus here I would say that -ia (two vowels) is more 
than the "ending" of the genus-group name, Placid- is not an acceptable 
stem under Art. 29.3.3, and the suprageneric names must be corrected 
from -i- to -ii-.

But this is based on my attempt to apply common sense to the situation, 
rather than on the Code itself.

Comments ?

Laurent -


On 3/12/21 9:31 AM, Tony Rees via Taxacom wrote:
> Hi all, I am going through various higher taxon names of protists etc. in
> my database and have come to the entries I have currently as
> class Placididea, order Placidida, family Placididae (ICZN treatments) for
> the new genus Placidia, as given in the original descriptions in:
>
> Mayumi Moriya; Takeshi Nakayama; Isao Inouye (2002). A New Class of the
> Stramenopiles, Placididea Classis nova: Description of Placidia
> cafeteriopsis gen. et sp. nov. Protist 153(2), 143-156.
> doi:10.1078/1434-4610-00093
>
> My question is, whether these higher taxon names should correctly be
> spelled with -ii- rahter than -i- , i.e.  class Placidiidea, order
> Placidiida, family Placidiidae, as per the type genus which ends in -ia, or
> whether something else is at play that renders the originally published
> spellings correct.
>
> Expert input would be appreciated,
>
> Regards to all - Tony
>
> Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
> https://about.me/TonyRees
> www.irmng.org
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