Taxacom: Hepialidae vs Epialidae

[David Redei]

The Greek letter "eta" (H, η) was in early Greek pronounced as a "h"
consonant. (This is in fact the reason why H of the Latin alphabet looks
like the capitalized form of the greek eta = H.) Later it was pronounced as
an "e" vowel (or, in the Hellenistic period, even "i"). Accordingly, there
are different ways of romanizing Greek words that start with eta.
Traditionally they were usually Romanized as "He...", cf. Ηρακλης -->
Heracles (and not Erakles), but after the starting h consonant dropped,
also as "E...". This caused innumerable confusion in zoological
nomenclature. Burmeister himself changed the spellings of many names on
this basis, e.g. here, his logic clearly is that Latinized name based on a
Green word "η..." should be transliterated as "e..." because η = eta = e,
so why putting a "h" before it -- which is true, but it did start with
"he..." in other Greek dialects in different places and times. There were
opposite acts too, e.g. the genus Enicocephalus (Hemiptera) was emended by
Stål to Henicocephalus because of the opposite logic: Stål's apparently did
not like the more modern transliteration used by the author (Westwood) of
the genus and he preferred Latinized names based on Green words "η..." to
start with "He..." (like in Heracles) and not with "E...". This is the
story summarized very briefly, but these are merely interesting trivia with
no relevance to nomenclature -- the only thing to remember is that any of
these changes (correction of an original spelling He... to E... or
correction of an original spelling E... to He...) are unjustified
emendations (*if* they are demonstably intentional, Burmeister's act
certainly is), see Art. 33.2.

With best regards,

David Redei

On Mon, 28 Feb 2022 at 13:06, John Grehan via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
wrote:

> in 1878 Burmeister listed the moth family 'Hepialidae' as 'Epialidae' with
> the footnote
>
> (*) L'ancienne ortographe : Hepialidae est fausse, le nom générique étant
> dérivé ήπίϦϵάλοϛ du mot grec, febris algida.
>
> my English translation being
>
> (*) The old spelling: Hepialidae is wrong, the generic name being derived
> ήπίϦϵάλοϛ from the Greek word, febris algida.
>
> The term 'Epialidae' was never adopted. Was this because Burmeister was
> wrong, or because of some overriding clause in the Code? I would be
> grateful for any enlightenment as I am as dead as a doornail when it comes
> to such matters.
>
> If necessary, the full source is at
>
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.biodiversitylibrary.org%2Fitem%2F86774%23page%2F527%2Fmode%2F1up&data=04%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C3d4b4232aa3f45482e3008d9fa7ed21e%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637816244876919431%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=1ML4PDMA7UrVno2J1toofgQOkaY0m2FiTcY37HQ0djk%3D&reserved=0
> see page
> 292.
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> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity for about 35 years, 1987-2022.
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