Citipati and Khaan-- confessions of a nomenclatural consultant

[bh480@scn.org]

From: Ben Creisler bh480@scn.org
Citipati and Khaan-- confessions of a nomenclatural
consultant

Although I did not rate a mention in the Acknowledgments
to the new Clark, Norell and Barsbold article, I checked
out the names for Mark before hand and can pass on some
background details.
Citipati osmolskae
I wanted to be sure that Citipati was a singular spelling--
the term "citipati" is commonly used in Asian art to refer
to pairs of dancing skeletons, male and female,
representing graveyard demons. However, pati
(meaning "lord") is a singular form in Sanskrit
dictionaries, so Citipati meets ICZN requirements that a
generic name be in the nominative singular (here with
masculine gender). A trickier question is the preferred
pronunciation. Applying the usual rules for approximating
Sanskrit words in English, you get CHITT-i-putt-ee.
Technically, the "ch" sound here should be unaspirated (as
in Spanish chico or Italian cita). Note, though, that the
unvoiced "ch" sound can't be approximated by a "j" sound
as is done in pinyin Chinese since Sanskrit had
contrasting c (unaspirated 'ch'), ch (heavily
aspirated 'ch') as well as voiced j and jh (a voiced j
with voiced aspiration!). All the vowels are short in the
name, and by convention, a short Sanskrit "a" is
approximated by an "uh" sound in English. However,
pronouncing the final short "i" as "ih" sounds a bit odd
so it's probably easier to make it "ee."  The accent would
go on the fourth syllable from the end when all the
syllables are "light" (short), a different rule from in
Latin. Originally it would have been a pitch rather than a
stress accent, though.  Of course, people will probably
pronounce it all kinds of ways, but I would avoid SITE-i-
PAY-tie.
Khaan mckennai
I recommended the spelling Khaan over Khan, using the
double "a" indicating a long vowel as in the Cyrillic
transcription of Mongolian (which the Mongolians may get
rid of in the near future in favor of their original, pre-
Soviet writing system). When I did searches in the major
electronic databases (Zoological Record, Biosis, Current
Contents, GeoRef, Geobase, etc.), I turned up thousands of
hits on "Khan" as part of a person's name or part of the
name of institutions. Although neither Khan nor Khaan was
preoccupied,  and thus in principle either would meet ICZN
requirements, the convenience of future scholars seemed a
logical consideration. It's hard to see how current
electronic databases could be made sensitive to names
of "taxa" to reliably distinguish them from names of
authors, places, etc, with matching spelling--at least for
the foreseeable future.  Khaan, pronounced in one syllable
[kahn], qualifies as the shortest spoken dinosaur name.