Taxacom: Tropicos and gender of names

Mon Feb 7 23:44:14 CST 2022

The main thing that is anomalous with our nomenclature is that the vocabulary we are dealing with is only partly Latin and often includes compound terms or special coinages that we arbitrarily declare to be nouns in apposition or adjectives or indeclinable sets of characters. This makes gender agreement for binomials unpredictable in all sorts of ways that aren't the case for actual Latin.

And there are many taxonomists around the world who do not natively speak a Romance or even an Indo-European language and for whom such declension rules may be even more foreign than they are to those of us who may know or have learned one of the European languages you list.

But the binomials with which I am directly hands-on are mostly for Lepidoptera, so I'm no longer on this particular carousel.

Donald

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Donald Hobern - dhobern at gbif.org<mailto:dhobern at gbif.org>
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________________________________
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> on behalf of Michael Heads via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 8, 2022 4:26 PM
To: Sharkey, Michael J. <msharkey at uky.edu>
Cc: taxacom at lists.ku.edu <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
Subject: Re: Taxacom: Tropicos and gender of names

many languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German etc.) have
gender agreement - it's not inherently difficult or anomalous.   And it's
unfair to blame the Victorians!

On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 5:11 PM Sharkey, Michael J. via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

> Does all of this discourse not make it obvious that gender agreement is a
> Victorian era remnant that has no place in modern, machine-read, names? We
> only need unique identifiers. Complete nonsense. Stick with the original
> spelling regardless.
>
> Michael Sharkey
> The Hymenoptera Institute
> Professor Emeritus
> University of Kentucky
> (859) 396-1649
> msharkey at uky.edu
>
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sharkeylab.org%2F&data=04%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C391815a0eb6540eb53cb08d9eac60be5%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637798958719584936%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=EGmd7%2F0Iap2fNQbGVYtUnFnTndt0NqTYWCjzxuTJVbE%3D&reserved=0
> ________________________________
> From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> on behalf of Douglas Yanega
> via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
> Sent: Monday, February 7, 2022 7:35 PM
> To: Rafaël Govaerts <R.Govaerts at kew.org>; taxacom at lists.ku.edu <
> taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
> Subject: Re: Taxacom: Tropicos and gender of names
>
> CAUTION: External Sender
>
>
> On 2/7/22 2:16 PM, Rafaël Govaerts wrote:
> > Dear Doug,
> > In Botany, the rule is that the original spelling should be maintained
> > unless it is against one of the articles.
> > So e.g.
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fipni.org%2Fn%2F77142913-1&data=04%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C391815a0eb6540eb53cb08d9eac60be5%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637798958719584936%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=fQI6ecKIt85oJ5%2F%2Fk7AuSsnmYvIlPM0Tb5ic4u7e08c%3D&reserved=0
> > Zingiber tenuiscapus is not to be corrected to tenuiscapa as it is
> > correct as a noun.
> >
> > If a choice is possible, e.g. "nanus" in a masculine genus is
> > transferred to a feminine genus and if the author uses "nanus" then
> > that is not correctable as he treats it as a noun. Subsequent authors
> > must then follow that.
> > Unless of course in the original publication it clearly indicated as
> > an adjective.
>
> Apparently the Tropicos database does not follow this rule.
>
> Zingiber is treated there as neuter, and it does not list this species.
> It does, however, list both "didymoglossa" and "didymoglossum" under
> Zingiber, both citing the same author and date. There is also a
> "longiglande" which is grammatically impossible, and likewise would
> appear to be an automated algorithm changing all "-is" endings to "-e"
> even if they are genitive noun forms like "glandis".
>
> Again, I was making two points: (1) not all resources are trustworthy,
> nor do they yield consistent results (2) given this, we would do well to
> place the burden of gender agreement on authoritative nomenclatural
> registries, rather than individual taxonomists.
>
> >
> > There are many published books indicating the gender of genera,
> > perhaps the best known is
> >
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bgbm.org%2FIAPT%2Fncu%2Fgenera%2FImprintRegVegNCU3.htm&data=04%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C391815a0eb6540eb53cb08d9eac60be5%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637798958719584936%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=YYmgav5eNMYuynp9uU05PzDenZPJPQtn9LxxFGSPk0I%3D&reserved=0
>
> This seems like precisely the sort of resource I am advocating for all
> organismal names. If all botanists agree to adhere to whatever it says
> in this source, *and* the names there are immune from being disputed and
> changed, then it is EXACTLY what I am advocating: an authoritative
> nomenclatural registry.
>
> Peace,
>
> --
> Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
> Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
> phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
>
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>          is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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*Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. *University of California Press,
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*Panbiogeography: Tracking the history of life*. Oxford University Press,
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