Re: Law[-]Abiding New Papers

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

I wrote:

> > According to Knoll, the species name_dangershoeki_ should have been
> >  _dangershoekensis_, and a whole paragraph is devoted to this
> > issue. I agree, but it would seem to be entirely academic.
>
>  I don't even agree. There's just no reason not to form the genitive
>  of a place name. Sure, the adjective ending -ensis would have made it
>  unambiguous that Dangershoek is a place name, and could therefore be
>  seen as preferable, but that's all.

Having read the paper, that doesn't change.

"Dangershoek's *Stormbergia*" may sound wrong in English, but Classical 
Latin didn't even have a word for "of", it used the genitive instead. 
(_De_ meant "about": _de bello gallico_ "about the Gaulish war".)

Knoll mentions the ablative as an alternative, but that would require a 
preposition, and that's not feasible in binominals...

> > Another whole paragraph is devoted to the genus name _Stormbergia_,
> >  with Knoll mentioning a lot of Germanic names ending in -berg
> > (Heidelberg, Kahlenberg, etc), and explaining why he would have
> > preferred the name _Stormbergia_ to have ended in -a rather than
> > -ia,
>
>  Sounds just silly to me. Maybe he's worrying about the pronunciation
>  of the g?

He's not. The -ia vs -a thing is just... there's not much of a reason to 
care about traditions in nomenclature that have nothing to do (either 
way) with either the rules of the codes or the grammar of any language. 
This one comes down to personal aesthetic preference.