Taxacom: A compromise solution (was Re: Single official lists of taxa (sensu Doug Yanega many proposals to this list))

[Lücking, Robert]

Tricholoma album (a mushroom)

Correct spelling or not?

Who will be faster to answer this question: 

A. Those who have a basic knowledge of Latin and Greek and follow the rule of gender agreement, or 

B. Those who advocate that one should apply the orthography of the first publication of the name?

My prediction is that (A) should take at best a few seconds, whereas (B) could take anywhere from one to many minutes, depending whether you know how and where to search.

Don't forget that both (A) and (B) constitute rules that have to be followed. And when it comes to rules, if nothing else matters, the one which is more practical should be followed. And what is more practical than saving time by being predictive and resolvable without having to consult the (not always readily available) literature? (And by the way, that literature is often in Latin... or in a typeset many of us will have difficulties to read)

Abandoning (A) in favor of (B) would be getting rid of one rule but adopting another one that is for sure more confusing and more time consuming, because everytime you have the feeling a termination is wrong, you would have to go back to the protologue to check. And we all know that misspellings occur in almost every resource and publication.

By the way, it is not necessary to actually know or learn the basics of Latin and Greek to understand rules of nomenclature. Just download the PDF of Stearn's Botanical Latin here: https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2FBOTANICALLATINWILLIAMSTEARN&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C5a0e2b78df454108103b08db7e142683%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638242397232271419%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=PYfIOQnWNokxehBUVieb9XrB2ECMzzhOUsMv2su2crM%3D&reserved=0
The rules apply equally to zoological nomenclature and practically all cases are explained, in a way easy to understand. Checking something in here is still faster than going back to the protologue for each name, and it is predictive, while protologue checking is not.

Robert





-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> Im Auftrag von Daniel Gustafsson via Taxacom
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 6. Juli 2023 12:57
An: Adam Cotton <thaibaggie at gmail.com>
Cc: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
Betreff: Re: Taxacom: A compromise solution (was Re: Single official lists of taxa (sensu Doug Yanega many proposals to this list))

This also seems to miss the point.

The point, as I understand it, is that instead of having A-us b-us (for
instance) as a universal pattern within a genus, you would have to remember (or look up) whether it is A-us b-us, A-us b-um, A-us b-e, A-us b-a, etc., individually for each species. There would be no way to ever predict what the name ends in for anyone, regardless of whether you had a classical education, speak a Romance language, or just like Latin. It would all be based on whatever someone thought was the prevailing usage within the group at an arbitrarily chosen point in time.

I don't care much either way when it comes to gender agreement but this seems to be unnecessarily complicated for no clear reason. It reminds me of nothing so much as when some phylocoders got the great idea to freeze 
genus+species for each taxon so that the genus name was preserved even
if the species changed clades, and there would be no predictability of relationship based on the name that is used.

Cheers,
Daniel

> 
> You seem to have missed the whole point, you would no longer need to 
> worry whether a genus and a species name is masculine, feminine or 
> neuter EVER again, they would become names that never change.
> 
> Adam.

>> No, sorry, I absolutely do not like Adam's suggestion. Then genera 
>> will contain some names with masculine, some with feminine, and some 
>> with neuter ending, and sorry, I do not want to remember that "OK, 
>> Bombus lapidarius, Bombus ruderatus, Bombus alpinus, Bombus confusus, 
>> Bombus auricomus and Bombus balteatus are all masculine, but Bombus 
>> germanica and Bombus pulchra are feminine and Bombus nigrum is 
>> neuter, because they were recently transferred from other genera and 
>> they kept their former ending.
>> (Imaginary
>> names.) Throwing away rules and making people remember each and every 
>> name one by one is considerably more difficult than following rules. 
>> People can cite examples of problematic adjectives, but the fact is 
>> that the overwhelming majority of the adjectives are easy to handle.

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--
Dr. Daniel R. Gustafsson, Research Assistant Professor Institute of Zoology Guangdong Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.

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Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for about 36 years, 1987-2023.