All Species Wiki
Advertisement

Here are naming methods found on this wiki and some of these on other taxonomy wikis as well:

Greco-Latin[]

Traditional Scientific[]

This method uses latin or greek prefixes and suffixes to make words to describe creatures for example: Homo sapiens (Man wise) or Homo australis (Man of the south). These binomial names are literal translations of either latin or greek words. Some binomial names are mixes of greek and latin language but the two examples above are Pure Latin examples because all of the parts of all of the words are in Latin. But some say that the traditional method is outdated and that making names universal is useless in an age where documents can be translated in a matter of minutes or even seconds.

The Traditional method was invented to help people from other languages understand the same name, in other words; universalize names so that everyone could understand. Latin and Greek were chosen because in Ancient Europe, the Roman Empire and later the East Roman Empire (which was greek) were the two biggest powers in Europe ever.

Pure Greek/Pure Latin[]

Some binomial names are purely greek or latin (Chelys chelys) = greek for "tortoise tortoise", to avoid confusion (someone might be reading an article from a latin perspective and might get confused if a name uses both greek and latin or vice versa), but the con with this method is that is reduces the number of unique binomial names that are able to be created.

Mixed Scientific[]

Japonic[]

The word "japonic" usually means related to the Japanese language family but in an taxonomic sense it has a different definition, on this wiki "japonic" means made with both Greco-Latin and Japanese elements. Some people feel that allowing Japanese to be a third universal language would be useful for the taxonomy community because there are a lot of words to describe nature in Japanese or it would add more possible binomial names to the mix or that only having European languages be the universal languages of the taxon community would be under-representing the other continents. An example of a japonic name is "Hoba aqua" because hoba in Japanese means hover and aqua in Latin means water. While the traditional name for it is "Tektogerris aqua" (Greek: molten/shell-strider Latin: water), some say Hoba aqua is a better name because it is shorter while others say Tektogerris aqua is better because taxonomists will be more use to greek and latin words rather an japanese ones. Some believe Japanese isn't a universal-enough language to be used in taxonomy.

Other[]

Fake Greco-Latin/(Semi-Vernacular)[]

I have noticed on taxonomy wikis that sometimes users will use "fake latin" to make binomial names for example "Homo overworldius" is a binomial for the Minecrafters who live in a digital space called the "Overworld" and therefore are named "Overworldius", this name specifically is a Semi-Fake Latin because only some parts of the name are fake latin, they kept the Homo but gave the secondary name an english name. Which reminds me that this method was made as an attempt to completely replace the idea of a "universal" name and that (according to Fake Latin supporters) universal names are useless in a global world. Others feel that Fake Latin gives taxonomy microcommunties individually and that having Name Balkanization is a good idea since not everyone likes the same words. Having japonic names can be seen as an inbetween stage between Name Universalism and Name Localism (Name Balkanization), in which native words are used when they are much shorter than the universal name but name universalism is still the main goal.

Pure Fake Greco-Latin/(Vernacular)[]

This is the most radical (in comparison to the Traditional method), where Name Localism is actually encouraged making it different from all the other methods, for example a name for the Mr. Men and Little Misses is Misteramanus humanus which could be seen as being very radical, though this style is currently sometimes not allowed on this wiki. Though it could be in the future, I mean who knows the future. Some say this is a wrong method because they say it diminishes the whole purpose of taxonomy in the first place.

Debates[]

Validity of Genus Chungus[]

Since the etymology of the word "chungus" is not very well known, there was a debate over if the Genus Pseudolagus should simply be changed to Chungus because the word "chungus" is shorter than "pseudolagus", but the debate was given evidence that the word "chungus" is actually a neo-latin word since its etymology is:

  • The first part comes from "cunnus" a vulgar Latin word, with "gus" added as a masculine suffix, giving "chungus" a silly profane connotation.
Advertisement