NOTES ON NOMENCLATURE 



347 



author who proposes a name for a suggested new group must himself 

 adopt the group in question, it is surely implied. Otherwise there 

 would he nothing to prevent hotanists of a certain type from bestow- 

 ing generic names in anticipation on a wholesale scale. They could 

 write for example : "In the event of the 30 sections of Garcinia 

 being regarded as genera, I propose the following generic names for 

 suclf as have not already received them," without assuming the- 

 slightest responsibility for the validity of the proposed new groups. 

 The recognition of the validity of such " conditional " proposal 

 of names would tend to increase the mass of synonymy with which 

 S3^tematic botany is encumbered. 



2. The Orthography of some Generic and Specific Names. 



The Vienna Code recommends that generic names derived from 

 names of persons should be formed as follows : (a) when the name 

 ends in a vowel, the letter a is added, except where the name already 

 ends in a, in which case ea is added ; (b) when the name ends in a 

 consonant, the letters ia are added, except where the name ends 

 in er, in which case a is added (Rec. IV.). Names contrary to a 

 recommendation, however, cannot be rejected (Art. 2), and the ori- 

 ginal spelling of a name must be retained, except in the case of 

 a typographic or orthographic error (Art. 57). 



'The method recommended for the formation of generic names 

 is artificial, being contrary to the etymological history of the Romance 

 lan°-uaces. Five considerations may, however, be urged in its favour : 

 (l) & that it is easily applied, requiring no linguistic knowledge; 

 (2) that the names of the persons commemorated are altered as little 

 as possible ; (3) that several cognate names in different languages 

 can be commemorated, e. g. Carpentaria, Carpenter ia,^ and Charpen- 

 tiera ; Ferraria, Ferreirea, and Herreria ; (4) that it is applicable 

 to names not of Romance origin; (5) that it has been generally 

 adopted. 



At the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, when Latin 

 was more in use as a means of communication between scientific men, 

 an attempt was often made to latinize personal names on etymo- 

 logical principles. Thus Tournefort used the Latin form Plumerius 

 for Plunder, and commemorated him in the genus Plumeria (Inst, 

 ed 3 i 659; 1719); and Kalm dedicated the genus Gaulilieria to 

 Gaulthier (Linn. Diss. Nov. PL Gen. 20, n. 1080; 1751). This 

 was in accordance with the well-known rule that French substan- 

 tives and adjectives ending in -ier and -iere are commonly derived 

 from Latin words in -art- or -eri-, as illustrated by the following 

 examples : denarius, denier ; januarius, Janvier ; carpentarius, char- 

 pentier ; mortarium, mortier ; primarius, premier (the doublet primaire 

 is a "learned" word introduced through books at a later period) ; 

 ministerium, metier {cf. Diez, Etym. Worterb. Roman. Sprachen, ed. 3, 

 275; 1869); ccemeterium, cimetiere ; heri, hier. The name Plunder 

 was doubtless derived from plumarius, but the convention adopted by 

 Tournefort and others was to latinize all such names by converting 

 4er or -iere into -erms. Thus Perraudiere became Perralderius (cf. 



