Talk:List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names

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examples of multiples of ten[edit]

Can you give some examples of the Greek multiples of ten in systematic names? They aren't spelled in the table as they are in Greek; the Greek words are deka, eikosi, triakonta, tessarakonta, pentékonta, exékonta, ebdomékonta, ogdoékonta, enneékonta. -phma 06:25, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No the greek words are spelt δεκα, εικοσι, etc. How you transliterate these into English is another matter, and various schemes have been in use. There's one approach that's suitable for Modern Greek, and another for Ancient Greek. And most of the technical words that have come into English from Greek have come from Ancient Greek, either via Latin, or presented in a Latin-style orthography, for instance reprsenting κ as c, and representing the rough breathing (lost in Modern Greek orthography) as an initial h. See also List of English words of Greek origin and List of Greek words with English derivatives, both of which have further explanation. rossb 11:15, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Some examples that come to mind immediately: decalogue, icosahedron, Pentecost. There are probably others of a more technical nature. rossb 11:13, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
"εξηκοντα" would be transliterated as "hexeconta", not "hexacota", in the usual via-Latin transliteration. Do you know of any systematic names using the "-cota" spelling? -phma 01:17, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I wanted to thank the authors for compiling this excellent resource. I've bookmarked it, and it should make it a whole lot easier to memorize species from now on. Keep up the good work. Dave (talk) 05:54, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

examples[edit]

The entries that do not have examples listed should probably be given examples or removed.

all entries now have examples DavidAnstiss (talk) 23:15, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

2007-02-7 Automated pywikipediabot message[edit]

--CopyToWiktionaryBot 09:16, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Scope[edit]

The paragraph:

The list also includes a collection of scientific words and common prefixes used in English. Words that are very similar to their English forms are not included.

seems to open the door to every Greek and Latin prefix. Already on the list we have 'tele-' with example 'telescope' and 'elektr-' with 'electron'. This completely dilutes the value of this list which should be specifically (pun intended) about systematic names. --Macrakis 18:44, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to agree, although I'm having trouble coming up with iron-clad reasons to keep it specific to species names. The top two I've come up with are (a) the words may be used differently in species names than in classical Greek/Latin, and (b) people might want to browse the list, rather than just look up a particular entry. Kingdon 23:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think there are very good reasons to limit this list just to species names and higher level taxonomic terms:
1. Wikipedia already has lists of general Latin and Greek terms used in English - including many scientific terms - with links to them directly from this page.
2. Binomial and taxa names are meant to be grammatical Latin terms - even when the words are of Greek origin. Greek words are therefore usually tranliterated following classical Latin rules - something which is not always the case with other scientific terms. Trying to accommodate both sets of words in one list will unecessarily add to its complexity.
3. This list is intended to compliment the Wikipedia article on Binomial nomenclature.
However quite a number of the general scientific examples in the list can be substituted by taxanomic ones, and I have already made a start at doing this.
(RT) 11:55, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like a consensus to me; I've removed the offending sentence. You've been doing a lot of good work, RT, including finding taxonomic examples. I just did ocean and micro, and the ones I found which remain are: dynam-, physi-, and stoichion. If we can't find examples for these we can just remove them from the list. Kingdon 15:47, 30 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Binomial Name Translator?[edit]

Anyone know of a webpage or other tool that, given a genus and species, will provide an English translation from the Latin/Greek/whatever? For example, if I fed it "Homo sapiens" it would return "Person wise." --Nessie (talk) 21:16, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

English Wiktionary has been improving rapidly and now includes many Latin entries, including words used only in binomial nomenclature. I'd recommend searching there. However, there is still no definitive resource for this, and some translations can be hard to come by. —Pengo 06:31, 25 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Gender for adjectives[edit]

In lists of this kind, for adjectives it is usual to either show the unmarked form (masculine for Latin) or to show all three genders (most useful for readers who don't know Latin). Is there a reason why this is not being done here? Compare the entries for "albus" (masculine form) and "americana" (feminine form). If there isn't a reason, then I suggest that a policy be established here and followed. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:23, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's a while since I contributed to this list, but you will find that where possible I included examples using each form of the adjective (eg for 'albus' there's Eudocimus albus, Quercus alba and Viscum album). But I'd support the idea of showing all three genders. Certainly a consistent policy would help. (RT) (talk) 15:23, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think my preference would probably be just "alb-", as it seems a little less cluttered and listing all three separately kind of seems like overkill for people who are just reading names, not coming up with them. Kingdon (talk) 20:20, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Searching on species names[edit]

I suggest that this list could serve an extra useful function if it allowed readers to search for species names.

The template {{Species abbreviation}} was several months ago marked for deletion, and a number of disambiguation pages will become invalid and up for deletion - see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tinctoria for several examples.

I have suggested that the terms concerned should be added to this list, and then redirected here. I have added "Innoctatus" and "Giganteus" today.

I have experimentally enhanced this list, section I-K, with three variations: links to the three gender forms of the species adjective individually; link to them combined, briefly shown; link to them combined, spelled out more clearly. Any thoughts? It would not be a huge job to add similar links to all the whole word terms in the list; for prefixes, a "look from" link might be similarly useful. There has been related discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation#Species_abbreviations. PamD 14:00, 28 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm having a problem with the {{in title}} template - see Template_talk:In_title#OR_malfunctioning.3F. The idea was to offer a link showing "innotatus or innotata or innotatum" as the text. (Though in this case it seems only the feminine form is in use). PamD 14:31, 28 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Also now raised at village pump. PamD 13:46, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(Added later for context): Another problem I discovered later and raised elsewhere is that "In title" does not search redirects so would miss articles at common name titles. The post below by Cpiral is a suggested solution. PamD 05:30, 16 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Use {{search link}} and the intitle search parameter.
Wikipedia is not a directory, but we might be able to get away with {{nomirror | {{Search link | ~term prefix::}} }}. — CpiralCpiral 04:11, 16 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There needs to be a way to make a print preview of the page look sensible. This would work:
Latin/Greek
(Search)
acaulis
(acaulis, term, term, term)
The parentheticals are wrapped in the {{nomirror}} mentioned. They dissappear for the page in a print preview. I tried it, it works. — CpiralCpiral 03:07, 16 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Cpiral: Thank you, sounds good. I won't be at a computer anytime today and this page is no place for a mobile phone, so hope to follow it up tomorrow. PamD 05:25, 16 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Cpiral: when you tried it, was it in article space? I tried it just now and, not to my entire surprise, got the error box described in the template documentation. It's a pity, as it looks to be the search we need. (Sorry to be slow in testing, it's that time of year... constant pressure to be thinking about Christmas shopping/cooking/travel arrangements/etc) PamD 23:46, 22 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Template Search link won't let us in article space?!. You're right. Not even a preview. But save that work you did. See, the whole issue of "noprint" and "selfreference" (the names of HTML attributes that template Nomirror applies) is vague in the help and project documentation and at Village Pump Technical, as is idea of disambiguation pages being "in the article space". For example, all the dab page that use intitle, like Stemmer shows the intitle search link on printed pages. That intitle is a search link that can be used "in article space" is debatable. See? And just like {{search link}}, {{intitle}} can be modified to have the desired "noprint" HTML attribute.
I'm not entirely sure how either the technical or wikilawyering sides determine the stretch we're making by wanting to provide the searches. And what exactly do mirror sites do with the pages, and how do they use the "selfereference" attribute? I don't know yet. So really, the vagueness needs to be cleared up before we can be certain that even if we do make the search link work in article space by giving it the proper attributes (instead of forbidding its use), that such work will be safe from wikilawering. This situation needs therefore be brought up at WT:NOT and/or the WT:SELF (either one really) for the Wikilawering, and at wp:VTP for the mirror-site questions.
To have a version of "List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names" with selfreference and noprint attributes, such that it is helpful from the online article, and helpful on any mirror sites, and prints well... I think is possible and even probable. So I will goto VPT, and maybe goto WP:SELF. One thing's for sure, the current version is doomed. Happy editing! — CpiralCpiral 01:30, 23 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I ended up at wp:ELNO discussing changing rule 9, on their talk page.

The technical stuff is a little bit clearer to, with the response I got at wp:vpt. — CpiralCpiral 07:45, 24 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, {{search link}} works in article space now. — CpiralCpiral 08:01, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

prefixes[edit]

@Oiyarbepsy:: Thanks for contributing to the work on this page; I'd taken my eye off the ball lately and must get back onto it. But I've reverted your change in which you replaced "look from" by "in title". Fragments like "Amby" are used as prefixes, part-words, and won't be found in a "in title" search. Compare All pages with titles containing Ambly with All pages with titles beginning with Ambly. They are a different case from the species adjectives which brought us here: it just seemed that it would be helpful to offer links for them too.

I admit that the column title could be improved, as it's not logical to say "Search for titles containing" and then include "All pages beginnng with". Perhaps they need to be separate columns, but that seemed wasteful of the amount of available page width. There isn't an option, with {{look from}}, to display a different, shorter, wording (as there is with {{in title}}). ... I've now tweaked the heading for the column in "A": what do you think? PamD 08:56, 15 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Toolkit[edit]

Here are the code fragments I've been using in working on this page. They may be helpful for other editors adding entries.

  • To add the final column to each entry on the page for a Latin adjective of the -us/-a/-um type.

(Simpler to just add it throughout, then go back and amend/delete).

|| {{in title|xxxus|xxxus}} - {{in title|xxxa|xxxa}} - {{in title|xxxum|xxxum}}
  • To add the final column for a Latin adjective of the -is,-e type:
|| {{in title|yyyis|yyyis}} - {{in title|yyye|yyye}}
  • To add the final column for a prefix:
|| {{look from|zzz}}

And some fragments I've used in the pages to which checking these added links has led me:

  • Hatnote to add where there is a genus article at the same word as the adjective:
{{about|the genus|other taxonomic uses|List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names}}
  • Dab page entry to add replacing ptms:
* ''xxxxx'', a [[ List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names|species name]]
  • "See also" entry for a disambiguation page:
==See also== *{{in title|xxxxxx}} ''Including use as a species name''
  • "See also" entries for a dab page which perhaps shouldn't exist because it's all species ptms:
==See also== *{{in title|xxxxxx}} ''Including use as a species name'' *[[List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names]]

PamD 09:13, 15 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Partial merge?[edit]

I've recently created a page called List of commonly used taxonomic affixes, which deals with the modified Greek and Latin suffixes and prefixes used in taxonomy. I've been thinking that the entries on this list that end in a hyphen could be moved over there while this list deals with just the complete words. Serendipodous 09:56, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Scope again[edit]

I removed sarawakensis, because this isn't derived from a Latin or Greek word for the geographical location; it just has a (Botanical) Latin ending applied. However, I see that nippon... is also there. Should words like these be removed? I think only those geographical names actually derived from Latin or Greek should be included. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:25, 12 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I love to count[edit]

I'm always quick to want a numerical estimate for the size of a list, but the format here does not make that easy to obtain.

What I figured out was to search the page source for the string "|-" and then subtract one item per letter of the alphabet, yielding an estimate of about 520 defining entries.

That's a substantial lexicon. — MaxEnt 18:26, 13 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This page is a viable resource for machine learning[edit]

This page is a viable resource for machine learning, but a missing semantic attribute is names from geography (e.g. from Taiwan) or circumstance of discovery (from the garden; from last week; who would have guessed; bet you never saw this one coming) as opposed to innate descriptive modalities. — MaxEnt 18:32, 13 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

you left out pleio-[edit]

The Latin word pleio- comes from the Greek word pleiōn, which means "larger, greater in quantity, the more part, very many". Roninscholar (talk) 03:53, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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