Pronunciation of latin scientific names

[Clark Moseley]

Does anyone know a source for the pronunciation of the latin scientific names of birds?  I can't find the pronunciation of some of the new genus names.  I know that we could all use some help. My old book, The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds by Joh K. Terres is a help on some of the names but is missing the new genus names that our AOU has now created.

 

Example:  Oreothlypis peregrina (Tennessee Warbler)

 

I have spent the last hour looking for a source with no luck,

 

Chip

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Clark "Chip" Moseley
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[Bruce Bartrug]

For the pronunciation, the vowels are the same as modern Spanish or Italian, the consonants very similar to Spanish.  A Latin dictionary would be most helpful in this regard.  The dictionary might not, however, be so successful in untwisting the meaning of scientific lingo.  E.g. (a Latin expression: ex gratis) the only thing in my Latin dictionary close to "oreo" (oh-ray-o) is Oread, a mountain nymph.  "Peregrina," however, is a female wanderer who travels outside her own country.  (A peregrino would be a traveling man.)  Since all Tennessee warblers are obviously not female, a wandering female mountain nymph doesn't seem the exact meaning of Oreothlypis peregrina.  Greek is also used as a root language for scientific nomenclature, but modern Greek (a la Google translate) is not the same as the linqua antiquo (Spanish.)

Another option would be to wait twenty years to see all of the current new-found revelations (knowledge?) undone by the next generation of ornithologists (lumpers rather than the current crop of splitters.)  That will only occur if and when the real relationship of DNA evaluations is revealed, reversing the "modern" tendency to create new "species" out of relatively minor characteristics.  I mean, seriously.  Who cares if there are "really" eight species of red crossbills.  Get real.

Sorry.  A pet peeve of mine.  From a scientific, not an OLCO perspective.

:):)BAB

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Bruce Bartrug
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The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.  - Albert Einstein

[Jon S. Greenlaw]

I address the pronunciation here, not the etymology of the root words in the names:

 

Pronunciation in English of scientific names do have certain broad rules. Most people do not know them, or if they do they choose to ignore them and pronounce the words in a way that makes sense to them. That's OK of course. Too often we also do this with English or non-English place names, so people end up pronouncing a word like the locals do or not. Whatever works for each person is used.

 

But, I am like you. I'd like to know the pronunciation that is a standard under the generalized prevailing rules. I understand that Latin scholars disagree on how Roman Latin was pronounced by speakers during the Roman Empire heyday. There seems to be two schools of thought; so even the scholars disagree on how Latin was once spoken as a living language. Yet I, like many others, took a couple years of Latin in a Maine high school eons ago, and consequently, am sensitive to issues of pronunciation.

 

The broad rules that seem to apply in prounouncing scientific words as the old ornithologists used to (keeping in mind that people like Coues, Ridgway, Zimmer, and others, used scientific names much the way we do English names of birds) are as follows:

 

(1) All syllables get pronounced, including ones that sometimes are silent in English pronunciation. For example, for the name of a Yellow Warbler subspecies, "parkesi" (a word that memorializes Ken Parkes, who was a professional ornithologist at the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh PA) is pronounced "par-KEES-eye," not "PARKS-eye," not PARKS-ee" (although these last are NOT "wrong").  In anglicized pronunciations as used here in the US at least, "i" as an ending is pronounced "eye" not "ee." 

 

(2) Some standard endings such as "-idae" for family names, e.g., Parulidae, Emberizidae, etc, are pronounced in US English at least as "-ah-dee," not "-ah-dye," which is the way I learned the diphthong "ae" ("eye") in my Latin class. The ending "-oidea" contains another diphthong "oi" get the sound "oy" in English.

 

Accents are always a problem: The old ornithologists followed an accent placement rule, which varied a little bit, but generally is: for two syllable words, accent on first syllable; for three syllable words, accent goes on the middle syllable (sometimes on first, but whatever sounds best and flows most easily is fine); in words with four or more syllables, accent usually goes on the second or third syllable from last, depending on what seem to flow most easily as a sound. The old AOU Check-list 5th edition (not more recent ones) shows the accepted placement of accents. For example, in the name for the Brown Thrasher, Toxostoma rufum, the 5th edition has the name with a diacritical (in this case "accent" mark) mark over the 2nd "o" to indicate accent on the third syllable, as follows: "tox-OS-tomah." Yet a variant pronunciation that one may hear is "toxo-STOME-ah." The early ornithologists would use the former (they spoke Latin and used it as a scientific language and standardized the pronunciations to aid communication), while the 2nd is NOT "wrong," only different. The trivial or specific epithet (keeping in mind that the "species name" is a binominal [not binomial] phrase - both words together) was indicated in the check-list with an accent mark over the "u" in "rufum," signifying that the first syllable gets the accent, as in "ROOF-um."  So to summarize, the thrasher's scientific name would properly come out "Tox-OS-tomah ROOF-um." The formal pronunciations as used by the old Latin-focused ornitholgists also are shown as early as Eliot Coues' Key to North American Birds (5th edition, 1903).

 

Now to the new parulid name that you bring up, "Oreothlypis peregrina:"   Analyze each word separately and count the syllables: 5 in the genus word and 4 in the trivial epithet or word.  Generally the accent would go on the 2nd or 3rd syllable in both cases. So the first word is "Or-ee-oh-THLEYE-pus" and the 2nd is "pear-ah-GREYE-nah." Sometimes people may pronounce this last word as "pear-ah-GREE-na" as well - either is fine, but usually an "i" is pronounced as an "eye" and not an "ee." AOU-5th edition confirms the trivial word with an accent mark over the "i" to indicate emphasis on the "'gri" syllable.

 

The original generic classification for the Tennessee Warbler, Vermivora (4 syll) get the accent on the third syllable "miv," i.e. "ver-MIV-or-ah"

 

I guess my general recommendation would be to break the word up into syllables and try the word out to yourself to find a syllable flow that seems to come naturally and smoothly, making sure to pronounce ALL the syllables. In longer words, try accents on 2nd or 3rd syllable from last and see what sounds best to you. GO WITH THAT.

 

Good luck and best wishes.

 

Jon  (Greenlaw)

 

[wtow...@roadrunner.com]

Left off the last half of my previous...I cannot find any reference to pronounciation. Sorry.
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Check our nature, family, and other photos at: www.fotki.com/townsend-maine
Updated on 13 October

[Bruce Bartrug]

Interesting, Peter.  It does, indeed, look like a Greek word.  The pronunciation "oh-ray-oat-lip-sis would be quite similar in modern Spanish, but the accent would be on the LIP syllable, not the RAY, and "h" is always silent in Spanish.

Does anyone know what the term is describing?

:)BAB 

On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 12:15 PM, Peter Vickery <peterv...@roadrunner.com> wrote:

Bruce - here's what my son thinks, as i mentioned, he took latin for 6 years.  he certainly know more about this than i do, and it seems, most others.

best, peter

Begin forwarded message:

From: Simon Vickery <simon.i...@gmail.com>

Date: November 12, 2011 10:24:52 AM EST

To: Peter Vickery <peterv...@roadrunner.com>

Subject: Re: [Maine-birds] Pronunciation of latin scientific names

its a greek word.

as far as i know it would be Oh RAY Oh th lip is. no spanish lisp or anything on the final s.

[Bruce Bartrug]

Oh.  Sorry.  Yes, someone does know.  :)  Am I to assume the Tennessee warbler has been placed in the same genus as the flame-throated?  If so, is there a reference to a paper describing why?  Admittedly there is a superficial resemblance in skull and bill structure between Tennessee and flame-throated, but the same could be said for only Vermivora species.  And the flame-throated was originally in genus Parula.

??
BAB

[Liffey Thorpe]

Pretty much asked and answered by now, but here's a good website with other excellent links.

http://capewest.ca/pron.html

Liffey

On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 8:27 PM, Clark Moseley <an.doc...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Bruce Bartrug]

Thanks, Louis.  In recent decades I think I've kept up more with neotropical taxonomy than North American, so I welcome the opportunity to educate myself.

Lynn, no offense, but I feel the idea that there are species of birds that can only be separated by analyzing sonagrams of their call notes to border on absurdity.  There may, in fact, be 10 "groups" of red crossbills, but I highly doubt that most, if any, of these groups are separate species.  I could be proved wrong in the future.  Further, even if there were sufficient evidence that some of these "species" are reproductively isolated, I would still call all of them red crossbills.  I side with Doug Pratt on this issue, and wish to call them by an IMU:  Identifiable Morphological Unit.  Just my opinion, no offense in the slightest.

BAB  

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Louis Bevier <lrbe...@colby.edu> wrote:

in the words of Rick Perry, oops!

here is the paper

[Bruce Bartrug]

Louis,

I too respect those undertaking efforts to divine the more complicated aspects of species descriptions, and there are many.  I'm sure you've bumped into the confusion surrounding the musician/song wren and nightingale wren(s) when working in the Neotropics. 

However, it just doesn't seem like wise science to not use as wide a range of parameters to define species as possible.  Restricting nomenclature based on only DNA or song type seems restrictive to me, even speculative.

For example, there are (possibly) two populations of vermillion flycatcher, one breeding northward in the Boreal summer, one southward in the Austral.  Either that, or there is one population that breeds twice a year.  If the former, however, the two populations are reproductively isolated and should be considered separate species regardless of their DNA or vocal similarities.

On the other hand, the songs of house wrens singing in the parks and gardens in and around Santiago, Chile, sound remarkably similar to the songs of house wrens in Ohio where I grew up listening to them.  I suspect DNA from the Chilean birds, if birds were shipped north to Ohio in the summer, would soon become a part of the genome of Ohio house wrens.  So I'm not certain the separation of northern and southern house wrens is really valid.  House wrens in Costa Rica seem to have a different, though recognizable, song, however, so perhaps the similarity between Ohio and Chile is just an accident.

Defining "species" can be an exercise in complexity to begin with.

:)BAB





 

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 7:01 PM, Louis Bevier <lrbe...@colby.edu> wrote:

Bruce,

Guess I didn't follow where the Red Crossbill classification crossed
with the wood-warblers ;-)

I'm no fan of the South Hills [Idaho] Red Crossbill as a species, but
the story from an evolutionary standpoint is fascinating. My feeling
from spending lots of time in the Neotropics and North America is that
if the songs sound roughly similar, then the birds respond to them
that way too. There are cryptic species, however, with totally
different songs and once recognized, led to morphological differences
that were overlooked. Many of those fall into neat biogeographic
patterns. The crossbills don't fit that model, and I'm not sure what
to think about them. Like you, they are Red Crossbills to me. Still, I
think we cannot ignore the variation and calls and those studying
them. Good for them!

Okay the LOON:

You could have seen the first East coast record of Arctic Loon, but...
The white patches over the femoral area are distinct in Arctic Loon,
but immature Red-throat also shows them. Many time I've followed up
and found an imm. Red-throat. They have a darker, grayer head and neck
which by contrast with the white-faced adults lead to confusion. That
is my best guess. If it was a Pacific, then I doubt you would have
seen obvious white patches. Where was the bird? What section of the
coast at the Cliff House. They removed the old building, I know, and
there is now a broad open area from which to scan. Were you there or
below the main complex to the south?

Best,

Louis

[Bruce Bartrug]

Louis, thanks for the update on the status of the Arctic loon in Maine :).  There were some red-throated loons present, but the bird in question had a straight bill, so maybe the bird had just finished preening?, exposing some white lower feathers.  I seriously doubt it was an Arctic if none have been confirmed in Maine waters.  I was, indeed, to the north of the main building, near the septic runoff channel.

Thanks,
BAB

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 7:01 PM, Louis Bevier <lrbe...@colby.edu> wrote:

Bruce,