Re: Who put the anus in zhaoianus?

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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Markus Moser" <dml_moser@web.de>
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 11:00 AM

> > It's an attempt of making an adjective of Mr. Zhao. The idea is to make 
> > the
> > name mean "the Zhao *Microraptor*", like "the Church-Gilbert 
> > hybridisation
> > buffer" or "the Carter doctrine"; and in Latin you can't simply put two
> > nouns next to each other to get this effect like you can in English.
>
> On the contrary, the latter is a quite common case: It's a "noun in 
> apposition".

The outcome is not the same. By the rules of English, you'd expect 
*Tyrannosaurus rex* to mean "the tyrannosaur king". It doesn't. It means 
"*T.*, the king".

> - the personal name ends in two vowels and adding a third one is not 
> euphonious ["zhaoi" vs "zhaoianus": the inserted "i" is a consonant like 
> "j"]

Of course whether something is euphonious is subjective to some degree... 
I'd just like to mention that Zhao is one syllable, not two (that's why this 
name appears as "Chow" in some older transcriptions), and that I wouldn't 
get the idea of not pronouncing the -i- in question as a full-grown vowel 
(but this could easily be a matter of southern, including Austrian, and 
central + northern _German_).