ACCENTING LATINIZED PROPER NAMES 



r I 'HERE appears to be no agreement at present among 

 **■ botanists as to the accent of certain Latinized proper 

 names. This is a matter that should be remedied, and various 

 efforts have been made in this direction. In this connection. 

 Dr. W. F. Ganong has addressed a letter to the Secretary of 

 the Joint Committee on Horticultural Nomenclature, part of 

 which is published herewith as a matter of interest : 



I have been very much interested in the movement now 

 in active promotion by your committee to standardize both the 

 scientific and common names of plants. The matter concerns 

 me from an educational standpoint, and I am hoping your 

 work will prove of benefit to teachers as well as horticultural 

 workers. Your invitation to send suggestions leads me to 

 speak of one matter which from an educational point of view 

 at least is certainly important. The scientific names of plants 

 are of course to be pronounced as well as written, and hence 

 your list will ultimately, I presume, give the pronunciation as 

 well as spelling of the names, precisely as Bailey's Cyclopedia 

 does in the text throughout the work. There is one point in 

 Bailey's otherwise wholly admirable work in which I think 

 he is not correct. In giving the pronunciation of 4-syllabled 

 species names which are personal names in the genitive case, 

 he uses the termination ii very correctly, but throws the accent 

 on the word backward, in order to keep as nearly as possible 

 the pronunciation of the name, e. g., Wilsonii. This makes a 

 practically unpronounceable combination. I have discussed 

 the matter with Professor Bailey, and he tells me he assumes 

 in such cases the two i's are to be sounded as one. This, how- 

 ever, is impossible if the \v rd is considered as Latin at all, 



