Re: Erliansaurus etymology

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

David Marjanovic (david.marjanovic@gmx.at) wrote:

<Menggu>

and in a later post:

<In Chinese. The syllable mong happens not to exist, so the
similar-sounding (because somewhat nasal) meng is taken, and gol doesn't
exist because syllables aren't allowed to end in l. "Monggol" appears to
be sort of dumbed-down to make it easier to understand for Westerners...
Nei Menggu Zizhiqu translates as Inner Mongolian Self-Governing Area.>

  To be less than contrite, this is exactly the problem that arises when
one language tries to take over the other languages' products, even in its
own borders. In America, at least, corruption of local names has led to
many place names to undergo variation depending on the mapmakers, and
which is why Massechussetts and Connecticut are neither pronounced nor
spelled the same way, nor do they provide a 1:1 correlation to the
original languages that gave rise to the words we use for these states.
This occured even as the British took over Wales and altered many place
names, "dumbing" them down a tad for the ease of the British. This is not
a slam against the government, mind, but a historical perspective.

  That Pekinese, Manchurian, and the languages of northern and
north-western China are all distinct, and in relation the latter two are
closer to the languages of the Mongolian and the Siberian peoples than
they are to Chinese, using Chinese to relate to the products of these is
like saying that anglo language "English" should be used for place names
in Scotland, turning "loch" into "lake", and so forth. Better yet, the
Chinese language and structure should not be used in favor of the the
essentially Mongolian peoples of the northern Chinese provinces, replacing
the Mongolian place names with Chinese versions. That the Chinese of the
area chose to favor the taxon *Erliansaurus* rather than *Erenhotsaurus*
is simply a matter of which form of name they chose to use, rather than
what was considered more appropriate by Chinese (or American) scholars.
Likely, if Paul himself had named the taxon, it would not bear the
monicker -saurus, but that, too, is a matter of taste, and nothing
requires names to come in some form, as long as the etymology is clear.

  Cheers,

=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)

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