RE: I'm late, I'm late...

["Augustus T. White" <augwhite@neosoft.com>]

On Wednesday, September 23, 1998 10:18 PM, DE SOSA [SMTP:43mad14@pdq.net] 
wrote:

> species name endings...
>
> Someone said -ae was a singular female ending, so does that
> mean Bradycneme draculae should have been B. draculai?  Or
> is there something I don't know about our Transylavanian friend?
> Or is it too incomplete to matter?

Mercifully brief Latin lesson follows:

In ICZN pig Latin you're probably right.  However "draculae" is good Latin. 
 The -a -ae ending is not actually a feminine ending for nouns (it *is* for 
adjectives).  It is a first declension ending.  Most first declension nouns 
are feminine, but a few are not (e.g., "agricola" = farmer).  "Dracula," 
because of its -a ending, is correctly treated as one of these exceptions. 
 The genitive (i.e. possessive) singular is thus "draculae".

There are also a few names (I can't think of a single example off-hand) 
which use the third declension: -s or -is, -is, -es, -ium. Thus:
mons = mountain
montis = of the mountain
montes = mountains
montium = of the mountains

Finally, there's fourth declension which is quite rare in Latin.  The only 
time you're likely to run into it is "cornus" = horn.  Fortunately for you 
(unfortunately for scholarship) most biologists seem to treat this as a 
second or third declension noun.  I can't remember what the correct endings 
are, but I think they are -us, -us, -uus, -uum (the initial 'u' in all 
cases is long and pronounced 'oo').

Since I have now exceeded everyone's pedantry quota for the year, I will 
shut up.