On 11 Jul 05 at 20:57, Jim McKenney wrote: > John Bryan said: "The exception being when the name ends in > 'a' when an e is added, thus balansae from Balansa." > > > Actually, what is being added in this instance is not an -e > but rather the letter combination ae. And it's being added to > the stem Balans- . The ae is the feminine singular genitive > form. More about this below; it gets more and more curious. > John has quoted the rule as it applies to specific epithets; > for generic names, one adds -ea to words which end in -a to > form a generic name. The name John used, balansae, is (or can > be) a specific epithet, but not properly a generic name. > > There are two aspects of this rule (actually it is > Recommendation 60B) which are bizarre in my opinion. > > Let's get the easier one out of the way first. In the example > used above, based on the name of the French botanist Benjamin > (Benedict) Balansa, (do I need to say a male person?) the > botanical names (both the generic name and the specific name) > are feminine. In other words, the rules treat names ending in > -a as feminine words. Never mind that in their language of > origin there might not be any such gender implications. Since > the name in question is a French name, and French does make > such gender distinctions, enough said about this one. Not quite so fast there, Mr. McKenney! This rule treats names ending in -a as being in the first declension. Now it's certainly true that the vast majority of words in the first declension are feminine, but a few are not. [Unless, that is, my memory is even more like swiss cheese than I think it is and I'm confusing which declension has which aberration. Don't have a Latin grammar at hand to be absolutely sure. Must remember to order a copy of Bennett's New Latin Grammar via Alibris.] A pet beef of mine is that the code for horticultural nomenclature stipulates that multi-word cultivar names should end with a noun. Small problem: in many languages, the substantive precedes the adjectival material. In other languages, the definition of noun is extremely different from the usual Indo-European form that this recommendation becomes almost meaningless -- in some cases, I believe it's pretty hard to decide if it's a verb or a noun you're looking at because the Latin-Greek based nomenclature for parts of speech just doesn't fit the paradigms of languages in other families. Some PacNW coast aboriginal languages form single words out of many chunks with the result that the single word contains a great deal more meaning than the narrower form of the Indo-European verb. All this makes hash of the recommendation "noun last". And it also runs afoul of the English language feature that almost any part of speech can be used as a substantive. Does that make it a noun in the sense of the recommendation? If I name a new crocosmia "Hot Sweaty Run" is the name valid or not? -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island