A bit of etymology (late)

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

Forgot to answer to this:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 8:01 AM
Subject: Re: Revising Hou et al, 96 (very very long)


> Ventral facing pubic peduncle in *Achillobator* (a recent publication with
> a misspelling (the new *Citipati* paper) suggests that the intended name
> may have been *Achillobataar*, but the english may have been rendered from
> a different source than the typical mammal pubs, giving us the variant
> "bator" spelling ... however, I digress)

The Mongolian spelling (Cyrillic, but easy to transcribe 1:1) is baatar (as
in Ulaan Baatar, not as in *Tyrannosaurus*-or-whatever *bataar*). The
Russians have probably known that city longer than the Mongolians have known
the Cyrillic (or Latin) script (and don't like double letters), so they
write bator, unstressed o being pronounced between English ah and uh. And on
goes the mess.

>   Presently, I'd say this character supports *Sinornithosaurus* as a
> stem-dromaeosaurid (needs a name, and under current convention, the name
> Dromaeosauroidea would seem applicable [*Dromaeosaurus* + oides {grk.,
> form}, lit., the form of *Dromaeosaurus*

Not knowing Greek, I thought -oides meant "similar to"? "Those that are
similar to *D.*"?

> and a means of providing a
> non-Linnaean formate for suprageneric clade names while following a
> convention of name-nesting:
>
>   -idae > idem (Lat.) the same, hence: those that are the same as [insert
> taxon]

How did you manage to derive -idae from idem? ~:-| Doesn't that appear in
Greek, where the Nereids are the 50 daughters of Nereus, and the Achaimenids
are the dynasty founded by Achaimenos (I'd be interested to see how that
name looks in the Persian original)?

>   -inae > diminutive of idem (Lat.) ... see above.

A diminutive in Latin formed by exchanging d for n? Huh? Normal in Latin is
the diminutive suffix -ulus/a/um. (Navis = ship, navicula = boat)

>   -ini > diminutive of -inae > idem (Lat.) ... see above.

Same amazement as above. Double diminutives exist in Latin and are usually
formed by exchanging -ulus/a/um by -ellus/a/um (shortenings occur: Esel =
German for donkey, from asellus, from asinus = Latin for donkey; cf. French
âne, directly from asinus)

> suffices

Suffiges, if we are picky enough not to write -xes :-)