Re: [dinosaur] dinosaur-l Digest Tue, 22 Dec 2020

To: Paul P <turtlecroc@yahoo.com>, "dinosaur-l@usc.edu" <dinosaur-l@usc.edu>

Subject: Re: [dinosaur] dinosaur-l Digest Tue, 22 Dec 2020

From: Ethan Schoales <ethan.schoales@gmail.com>

Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2020 01:08:31 -0500

Delivered-to: dinosaur-l@mymaillists.usc.edu

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Reply-to: Ethan Schoales <ethan.schoales@gmail.com>

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Obviously that can't be a rule since it's impossible to make objective, but people ought to, when coming up with names, put some thought into how easy to remember, spell and pronounce Âit'll be for everyone else. If all else fails, just choose a combination of commonly-used root words that describes your organism and isn't taken.Â

Oh, and as for updates to the Code, there is this website: http://iczn.ansp.org/wiki/. But currently only Comissioners can edit it, so if anyone else has a suggestion, they'll have to find another way to make it for now.Â

I've looked there, but can't find anyone proposing making fixing "incorrect transliteration or latinization, or use of an inappropriate connecting vowel" a justified emendation (as the Code puts it). I also wonder if anyone has proposed some other stuff I'd like, such as deciding that, if Alice names X but it's preoccupied, and Bob renames X to Y without asking Alice about it, the name Y is unavailable - like what happened with Megapnosaurus.Â

On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 12:06 AM Paul P <turtlecroc@yahoo.com> wrote:

Similiyanornis (did I spell that right?) is not an awful name, but it isn't exactly euphonious. It's a bit of a tongue-twister.

The ICZN is clear that euphonious names are preferred. That might be even more important than the etymology.

Â Â Paul P.

On Wednesday, December 23, 2020, 08:06:58 AM UTC, Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu> wrote:

ÂUnlovely and/or wrongly formed:

Preposing simili- is a clunky way of trying to capture the meaning âsimilar to.â What happened to good old -oides (or the somewhat less common -aster)?

âAbitusavisâ is supposed to be derived from *abitus* âdepartureâ, but the -s in *abitus* isnât really part of the word: itâs a grammatical ending indicating case and number. If you really want âdeparture bird,â it would be *Abituavis*.

âNick Pharris

On Dec 22, 2020, at 10:51 PM, Ethan Schoales <ethan.schoales@gmail.com> wrote:

ïWhat do you mean by that?

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 1:10 AM Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu> wrote:

Mickey Mortimer wrote:

âJust as an example, I just checked Similiyanornis and Abitusavis that were described recently, and that's true for them.Â We would be losing a lot of names this way.â

No great loss, as far as those two are concerned. Ugh.

âNick Pharris