Taxacom: Uleiota Latreille and Uleiota dubi*

[Douglas Yanega]

On 1/24/24 8:55 AM, Laurent Raty via Taxacom wrote:
> Is there an actual reason to make this a vox hybrida (half-Greek, 
> half-French)...?

No, but that is a possible interpretation.

>
> My inclination would be to treat Uleiota as a latinization (with 
> change of ending) of ὑλειώτης (uleiôtês), which Greek dictionaries 
> translate as 'forester' -- itself formed from ὕλη (ulê), forest + 
> -ώτης (-ôtês), a Greek masculine noun-forming suffix, used i.a. to 
> form some demonyms. (In English, this suffix becomes -ot, as in 
> 'Cypriot', an inhabitant of Cyprus; this derivation is consistent 
> enough with Latreille's subsequent statement that the name means 
> "habitant des forêts".)
> Although ὑλειώτης is clearly masculine in Greek, Uleiota "takes the 
> gender normally appropriate to [its] changed ending", which makes it 
> feminine under Art. 30.1.3. (This would be true even if Latreille had 
> treated it as masculine or neuter, explicitly or implicitly, I believe.) 

That this was a latinization of the Greek "uleiotes" is also a possible 
interpretation. However, the Code, as it stands, does not really allow 
interpretations. In certain articles, external evidence is required - 
i.e., a dictionary - and in other cases, internal evidence is required - 
either an etymology, or combination with a species name. At some level, 
evidence is required, rather than supposition or hypothetical 
etymologies. The list of Greek endings given under Art. 30.1.3 does not 
include "-es", so it is a hypothetical change of ending.

As for Mike Ivie's comment:

> When will we wise up and drop all this gender agreement nonsense?   It 
> serves no scientific purpose, and is not needed, as proven by over a 
> decade of success by the Lepidopterists.

I can use a fairly apt analogy. Imagine that lepidopterists are people 
who own 100% electric vehicles. If there was an international law that 
banned all gas-powered vehicles starting tomorrow, then the people who 
own electric vehicles would be the only ones who are unaffected by the 
consequences of that ban. Everyone else would be in immediate and 
serious trouble.

It is the same with gender agreement. Outside of Lepidoptera, 
approximately 1 out of every 5 species is presently in a genus of a 
different gender from the genus in which it was originally described. To 
abandon gender agreement would mean that hundreds of thousands of 
species names, including many of the most well-known, would suddenly 
change back to their original spelling. That would be absolute chaos for 
everyone - except the lepidopterists.

If you state that you want to set a date after which all NEW species 
names are immutable, that's fine, except that there are over 5 million 
names that would be unaffected, and therefore not really much of an 
improvement over the status quo.

If you state that you want to make all EXISTING species names immutable 
from date X going forward, then you face two major problems: (1) a 
significant percentage of species presently are placed in more than one 
genus, depending on which authority one follows, and (2) a significant 
percentage of species presently are spelled more than one way, depending 
on which authority one follows. This would leave tens of thousands of 
unresolved disputes.

Here is my point: while that latter proposal might seem like a fair 
alternative, in order for it to work you would need to build a database 
of literally every species name ever published, to settle all of the 
disputed cases AND to inform taxonomists what the correct spelling is 
for each given species. After all, species will continue to switch 
genera in the future, so it could get very confusing to see masculine 
epithets in feminine genera (and vice-versa) if you don't have an 
external resource that *tells* you that this is indeed correct.

*If you're going to build a database,* why not just build one that 
accommodates gender agreement? The process, after all, is fairly trivial 
to implement in a database form. You simply have one list that contains 
all of the genus names outside of Lepidoptera, and that states their 
genders. Then, a second list that tells you whether an epithet is a 
declinable adjective, or not, and if so, how to spell its different 
gender forms.

That is actually *much simpler* than compiling a list of every name ever 
published. In other words, if your database has a single entry for 
"maculata/maculatus/maculatum", then that one entry alone accounts for 
7000 species. You wouldn't need to look each one of those 7000 species 
names up individually.

Now, maybe - hopefully - you see my point.

In a world without gender agreement, we would NOT be able to look at a 
species name spelled maculata/maculatus/maculatum and KNOW, without 
checking against a master list of every species name, whether the 
particular spelling being used *for a given species* is the correct one. 
Only if we RETAIN gender agreement can any taxonomist be confident that 
the spelling of a name is correct, because one rule applies to all 
species with that epithet.

We've been over this debate before, and the primary objection is not 
simply that it's a pain that names can change spellings - that can be 
easily dealt with - but that individual taxonomists frequently are asked 
to INDEPENDENTLY do linguistic research to determine the correct 
spelling of a name. I fully agree that this is an unfair burden, and 
that this is where all of the real problems with gender agreement arise. 
As this thread very amply demonstrates, if you ALLOW taxonomists to 
argue over etymology, then they WILL argue over etymology. However, we 
can have gender agreement AND make it impossible for anyone to argue 
over any of it ever again. Just make those two lists I just referred to, 
and make them official. If Uleiota is on the Official List as being 
feminine, then there is no more debate possible, *and no justification 
or etymology is needed*. The entry simply needs to say "Uleiota 
Latreille, 1796 - feminine". That's it.

For those of you who are skeptical, I should add that I have already 
compiled a database of nearly every declinable adjective used in 
zoology, and have a list of all available genus-rank names ever used in 
zoology, and have assigned genders for most of those falling under Code 
Article 30.1, which is (so far) over 1/3rd of all genus names. It's not 
as hard as you might think to get this done, in a way that would allow 
taxonomists to continue to use gender agreement but never again have to 
argue about it or look in a dictionary.

Peace,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
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