SCIENTIFIC NAMES OF LATIN AND GREEK 

 DERIVATION. 



BY WALTER MILLER, 



Professor of Classical Philology, Leland Stafford Jr. University. 



While the first volume of Jordan and Evermann's "Fishes 

 of North and Middle America" was in preparation, Dr. 

 Jordan invited me to review and verify the etymologies of the 

 names of the fishes described. In the course of this review 

 some of the inconsistencies into which nomenclators have 

 fallen in the construction of names of classical derivation 

 came frequently under discussion. Two sets of words 

 seemed to cause more trouble than any others : what should be 

 the gender and inflection of compounds in -pus (genitive, 

 -podis) and -stoma, -soma, etc. (genitive, -stomatis, 

 -somatis, etc.), and what the form of the family names to 

 be derived from them, were the questions that called for an 

 immediate answer. As thorough an investigation as possi- 

 ble followed and a satisfactory conclusion was reached. 

 But the examination of the problems these questions pre- 

 sented naturally suggested others in regard to the forma- 

 tion, gender and inflection of New Latin compound names; 

 for most of the irregularities in scientific nomenclature are 

 of that sort. Here and there we find masculine nouns in -a 

 (genitive, -ae) masquerading as feminine, feminine nouns 

 in -us (genitive, -i) and neuters in -us (genitive, -us, Greek 

 -ok?) as masculine, and neuters in -ma (genitive, -matis, 

 Greek -/xaTo?) as feminines in -a (genitive, -ae). Again, 

 through a misconception of the inflection of a word it often 

 appears in compounds and in family names in a sadly muti- 

 lated form. 



Various scientific writers have arbitrarily departed from 

 the philologically correct method of nomenclature estab- 

 lished by Linnaeus; 1 moreover some difference of opinion 



1 Even Linnseus, however, is not absolutely free from errors in translitera- 

 tion: e. g. Systema Natures, I 12 : Oxy-rinchus (pp. 395 and 512), Callo- 

 rynchus (p. 402), Gono-rynchus (p. 528), Di-delphis (p. 71), Syn- 



gnathus, as masculine (p. 416). 



[115] April 8, 1897. 



