226 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



Employment of the vernacular form of the plural or of an 

 oblique case; e. g., the Latin plural of lens is loitcs, but the 

 English is IcJiscs ; so atlas {atlantcs) atlases ; enei?ta {eneniatcL) 

 enemas; anivial [aiiimalia^ animals : in the phrase "fibers of 

 the callosum, " the last word might still be regarded as Latin ; 

 but if one said " callosum's fibers" the English possessive 

 would indicate paronymization. 



§46. International and National Terms. — By general 

 consent Latin constitutes a common or international language 

 for scientists. National terms may be either unrelated to 

 the Latin antecedents/ hence heteronyms ; or obviously related 

 thereto, hence paronyms. Sea horse, Clieval matin and See- 

 pferd are synonyms (in the broader sense, §42) but to either an 

 Englishman, a Frenchman or a German, two of them are for- 

 eign words and unacceptable. Hippocampus is distinctly a 

 Latin word, and the frequent occurrence of such imparts a ped- 

 antic character to either discourse or printed page. Hippocamp, 

 hippocampe, hippocampo and Hippo/camp are as distinctly nation- 

 al forms of the common international antecedent (not to in- 

 voke the original Greek U-oy-ap-not;^, and are readily recognized 

 by all, while yet conforming to the " genius " of each language. 



§47. The Parotiymic Advantages of Mononyms. — The ob- 

 ject of paronymy is to endow anatomic language with national- 

 ity without obscuring its internationality. With mononyms 

 the paronymic changes (if any) are slight, involving mostly the 

 termination, or, with German, the capitalization of nouns and the 

 occasional replacement of c by k. The word is readily recog- 

 nized, and its abbreviation would be the same in any language. 

 But with polyonyms the relative position of the substantive and 

 the qualifier is commonly reversed in the two groups of lan- 

 guages, Romaniform and Germaniform. In the former the 

 noun more often precedes, in the latter it almost always follows.^ 

 Hence there is a different aspect of the entire term, and the 



'Or related so remotely that the connection is obscure. 



^Notwithstanding the familiar exceptions, alma viater, pia mater, and 

 notary public. 



