Bacteria and Viruses 109 



Recommendation 27e. Orthography and Gender of Names 



RECOMMENDATION 27e. A new specific or subspecific (varietal) epithet 

 taken from the name of a man may assume either a substantival or an ad- 

 jectival form. 



When the epithet is a substantive, the modernized Latin genitive is formed 

 in the following manner: 



(1) When the name of a person ends in a vowel or -y, the letter -i is 

 added. 



(2) When the name ends in a consonant, the letters -11 are added (thus, 

 welchii from Welch) except when the name ends in -er, when -i is 

 added (thus, barker] from Barker). 



(3) When the personal name is already Latin or Greek or has been 

 latinized, the appropriate Latin genitive should be used. 



(4) The syllables which are not modified by these endings retain their 

 original spelling, even with the consonants k and w or with group- 

 ings of vowels or consonants not used in classical Latin. 



When the epithet is an adjective, it is formed by the addition of an ap- 

 propriate ending. 



ANNOTATIONS 



Recommendation 27e. A specific epithet taken from the name of a 

 man is usually placed in the genitive (possessive) case; sometimes an 

 adjective is formed by use of an appropriate Latin ending. 



Names of men that are already Latin or have been Latinized form 

 the conventional Latin genitive. Carl von Linne Latinized his name 

 to Linnaeus, with the genitive Linnaei. It is customary to regard names 

 ending in -a as in the first declension forming the genitive by adding 

 -e, as Shigae from Shiga, Miyagaivae from Miyagawa. 



Names of men in languages other than Latin are first Latinized. 

 The Romans had several forms of proper names, praenomina, cog- 

 nomina, names of gentes (clans) . With few exceptions these had -us 

 as an ending, in most cases the name ended in -ins. In conventional 

 formation of the genitive the -ins becomes -ii. However, the Latins 

 noted difficulty in pronouncing genitives of names in which the 

 -ius is preceded by a vowel. The -ii in such cases was contracted and 

 became -/; thus the genitive of Gaius is Gai (not Gaii) , of Pom- 

 peius is Pompei (not Pompeii) ; hence the recommendation that 

 personal names ending in a vowel other than -a form the genitive 

 by addition of -/: as Sonnei (not Sonneii) from Sonne, Noguchii 

 (not Noguchiii) from Noguchi. 



Most Latin personal names ending in -ins had a consonant pre- 

 ceding this ending. Two methods of forming the genitive were com- 

 monly employed. In perhaps the majority of examples found in 

 Latin the genitive ending is -ii, but in some it is -i. One finds Plinius, 

 Plini; Aesculapius, i; Curtius, i. On the other hand scores of names 

 are recorded which end in -ius and have -ii in the genitive, as 

 Arcesius, ii; Curtilius, ii; Cuspius, ii; Mallius, ii. 



