[Taxacom] Correct name of the Wasp Spider

[Michael Schmitt]

Dear Geoff, dear colleagues,

many thanks to all who responded to my inquiry. As Thomas Pape already 
wrote: it is no doubt that the original spelling of the specific epithet 
published by Scopoli in 1772 is "brunnichii" - no umlaut, double "i". 
Consequently, neither nationality of the name patron nor provenience of 
the name do matter, as far as I see. In the meantime I learned from an 
arachnologist that the spelling "bruennichii" (i.e. putting in an "e") 
was first used by T. Thorell in 1873 (Remarks on synonyms of European 
spiders, p. 518), without giving reasons. It is also clear that the 
prevailing usage nowadays is "bruennichi". This spelling is found in the 
World Spider Catalog, Version 11.0. The only question left to me is now: 
Who did when and on which grounds delete the second "i"?

Kind regards
Michael



Am 10.07.2017 um 23:28 schrieb Geoff Read:
> There is no diacritic in the name in the original publication.  Looking as
> hard as possible I cannot detect any diacritic mark on the U.   Someone
> may have wrongly added a diacritic later but it was not in the original.
>
> Go to p.125 at this link:
> http://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/dms/load/img/?PID=PPN572160542&physid=PHYS_0001
>
> Aranea Brunnichii
>
> Geoff
>
> On Sat, July 8, 2017 7:51 pm, Paul van Rijckevorsel wrote:
>> For completeness sake, the -e- will have been added
>> because it was (presumably) named after the Danish
>> zoologist Morten Thrane Brünnich. As governed by
>> Article 32.5.2.1 an umlaut in a German word (or a
>> word about which there is doubt as to its provenance)
>> is to be deleted and an -e- is to be added.
>>
>> Paul
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Doug Yanega" <dyanega at ucr.edu>
>> To: <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
>> Sent: Friday, July 07, 2017 7:19 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Correct name of the Wasp Spider
>>
>>
>>> On 7/7/17 5:14 AM, Dilrukshan Wijesinghe wrote:
>>>> This is a classic case of nomenclatural busybodies "correcting"
>>>> original
>>>> spellings to their notion of what a name should be, without following
>>>> the
>>>> original spelling. The same thing has happened with numerous other
>>>> spider
>>>> names (and no doubt with the names of other animal species). To take
>>>> another spider example: the original spelling of the name of the
>>>> pantropical jumping spider which is usually given as "Plexippus
>>>> paykulli"
>>>> (with one terminal i) was Attus paykullii, described by Audouin in
>>>> 1826.
>>>> With its transfer to the genus Plexippus the name should, of course, be
>>>> written as Plexippus paykullii (Audouin, 1826), yet the World Spider
>>>> Catalog (http://www.wsc.nmbe.ch/species/32089/Plexippus_paykulli) gives
>>>> it as Plexippus paykulli. Roewer (1954, Katalog der Araneae, 2b, p.
>>>> 1086)
>>>> gives this name correctly as Plexippus paykullii.
>>>> I think the wholesale changing of -ii to -i for the names of spiders
>>>> was
>>>> introduced in the more recent spider catalogs.
>>> There is a Code Article for this specific type of change (below), and
>>> the
>>> same rule (33.3.1) applies; if the incorrect spelling is in prevailing
>>> usage, then it *becomes* correct, accordingly. If the only place these
>>> spider names are spelled "-i" is in the catalogs, then they might not
>>> qualify as being in prevailing usage (also below).
>>>
>>> "33.4.Use of -/i/for -/ii/and vice versa, and other alternative
>>> spellings,
>>> in subsequent spellings of species-group names.The use of the genitive
>>> ending -/i/in a subsequent spelling of a species-group name that is a
>>> genitive based upon a personal name in which the correct original
>>> spelling
>>> ends with -/ii/, or vice versa, is deemed to be an incorrect subsequent
>>> spelling, even if the change in spelling is deliberate; the same rule
>>> applies to the endings -/ae/and -/iae/, -/orum/and -/iorum/,
>>> and -/arum/and -/iarum/."
>>>
>>> "*usage, prevailing*,/n/.
>>>
>>> Of a name: that usage of the name which is adopted by *at least a
>>> substantial majority of the most recent authors* concerned with the
>>> relevant taxon, *irrespective of how long ago* their work was
>>> published."
>>> (emphasis mine, to highlight that one calculates usage by counting
>>> AUTHORS, not works, and that one can go back as far as one deems
>>> necessary
>>> to assess the pattern).
>>>
>>> I'm not pointing this out to start a debate over the pros and cons of
>>> "prevailing usage", only to point out that these provisions do exist,
>>> and
>>> that the reason these provisions exist is so people won't keep changing
>>> spelling back and forth based on finding old forgotten references, and
>>> arguments over grammar. The "novel" principle that the 2000 Code edition
>>> introduced is that stability is best achieved through consensus (rather
>>> than incessant one-upmanship as to who can dredge up the oldest and most
>>> obscure references, or make the most scholarly foray into the nuances of
>>> Latin grammatical construction). It is unfortunately hard to come up
>>> with
>>> a purely objective criterion as to what, exactly, constitutes
>>> "consensus",
>>> so the definition of prevailing usage adopted is not perfect, but it's
>>> an
>>> approximation. Names can be rendered *permanently* unalterable via the
>>> List of Available Names (LAN: Article 79), but that's a special and
>>> difficult process.
>
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>
> Nurturing Nuance while Assaulting Ambiguity for 30 Some Years, 1987-2017.

-- 
Prof.Dr. Michael Schmitt, FLS
Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universitaet
Allgemeine & Systematische Zoologie
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D-17489 Greifswald
Germany

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