108 International Code of Nomenclature 



Recommendation 27d. Orthography and Gender of Names 



Recommendation 27 d (3) . In the earlier writings in biology it was 

 common practice to Latinize the names of persons. For example: Carl 

 von Linne usually Latinized his name to Carolus Linnaeus. The 

 plant generic name Linnnea was formed by dropping the ending -^is 

 and adding -a. 



Recommendation 27 d (4) . Generic names are frequently taken from 

 the name of a person by adding diminutive and sometimes other 

 endings. 



In biology many suffixes have been used to latinize personal names 

 for use as generic names. Kuntze {Revisio genernm plantariim 1781) 

 lists 20 "pure suffixes" (reine Suffixe) from botanical writings. The 

 use of a diminutive ending is frequent in bacteriology. The following 

 have been used: 



-ella, -iella. Commonly -ella is used as a diminutive suffix to per- 

 sonal names that do not end in a sibilant: Salmonella from 

 Salmon, Shigella from Shiga, Pasteurella from Pasteur, Borde- 

 tella from Bordet, VeiUonella from Veillon, Bartonella from 

 Barton, Graha?nella from Graham; an exception is Naumanni- 

 ella from Naumann. Sometimes -iella is added to names ending 

 in -s or -x: Klebsiella from Klebs; Simonsiella from Simons; 

 Coxiella from Cox; Rickettsiella from Ricketts; an exception is 

 Moraxella from Morax. In some cases a consonant is inserted for 

 euphony: Miy a gate an ell a from Miyagawa. Or a final vowel is 

 dropped: Brucella from Bruce. 

 -illus, -ilia, 'illnm. The first of these Latin diminutive endings 

 has been used by Heller in coining more than twenty names 

 for genera carved from the genus Clostridium as: Henrilliis 

 from Henry; Novilhts from Novy; Macintoshillus from Macin- 

 tosh. 

 -iota, the name of the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet, has 

 been used in forming the generic name Colesiota. 

 Recommendation 27 d (5) . There was no Latin letter lo, but words 

 containing the letter w are Latinized with retention of the iv as Wol- 

 bachia from Wolbach. The letter k was used in old Latin, but in 

 classical Latin was replaced by c. Personal names from languages 

 other than Latin or Greek retain the k when Latinized, as Kurthia 

 from Kurth. The letter y was introduced into the Latin alphabet 

 for the correct transliteration of the Greek letter upsiloji, for which 

 there was no exact Latin equivalent, and is recognized in bacterio- 

 logical Latin, as in Wolhynia from Wolhyn. 



