Caixana (1 Viewer)

Currently the Key gives:

caixana
Caixas (= Caxias), Piauí, Brazil.

Click to expand...

...thus making the specific name an apparent geographical adjective -- caixanus, -a, -um: from Caixas.

According to Wikipedia (albeit admittedly in Portuguese only):

Os Caixanas são um grupo indígena que habita o médio rio Solimões, na Área Indígena Barreira da Missão, além do alto Solimões, na Terra Indígena São Sebastião, no estado brasileiro do Amazonas.

Click to expand...

...which makes Caixana, potentially at least, a (masculine -- note the article 'os') noun, completely unrelated to Caixas in Piauí. (The word may also be spelt Kaixana.)

Spix 1824, so far as I can see, didn't offer any hint as to what he intended this name to mean. However, he introduced it in combination with Aratinga, a name that he fully consistently treated as masculine everywhere else in his work -- combining it with such masculine adjectival species-group names as haemorrhous, chrysocephalus, luteus, xanthopterus, perlatus, fasciatus, aureus, but also referring to it consistently in the masculine in his Latin descriptions: he described Aratinga as a group as macrurus; and the various species he listed (on a quick check -- I may have overlooked some) as majusculus, aureo-luteus, coccineus, miniaceo-aurantius, variegatus, immaculatus, medius.

And then suddenly this caixana that would be a feminine adjective...?

Spix 1824 also used caixana in combination with Macropus, a genus that he only also combined with the species name phasianellus, which is a noun. However, this name ends in a latinisation of πους (foot), masculine in Greek, and ends in -us, the usual masculine ending in Latin; and Spix described the genus as cuculinus, and the species as, respectively, olivaceo-fuscus and castaneus, all masculine.

So here again, caixana being feminine makes no real sense.

To my knowledge, there are no other uses of this word in avian nomenclature.

(There is a bit more than the etymology at stake here, actually. Currently Aratinga is treated as feminine because this is the default for names ending in -a in the absence of indication provided by the author, and because Spix is regarded as having given contradictory indications about the gender he intended for this generic name, which in turn rests entirely on caixana being a feminine adjective. Should caixana be a noun, the contradiction would vanish, everything in the OD would indicate that Aratinga is masculine, and it would in principle have to be treated as such.
Macropus Spix is available but preoccupied by Macropus Shaw (masculine), which is in use for kangaroos, hence it can't become valid and its gender is of no practical importance.)

Sure, could be. Well noted, and well resoned, as usual, Laurent (as far as I can follow it).

Note that Spix's "Macropus caixana" was claimed to "Habitat in sylvis fluvii Tonantins" [Lives in the forests of River Tonantins], and that "Tonantins" (here alt. here) does point at the same region around Solimões River (the upper stretches of the Amazon River in Brazil, with the Rio Negro upstream to the border of Peru) ... where the indigenous Caixana (Kaixana) Tribe lives (here), in Northwestern Brazil (far, far from Caxias, in the state Piauí, on the opposite side of Brazil).

In my mind this is a fully possible explanation (this said without understanding most of the Latin grammar and its consequences)

Björn

PS. Also note that the Caixana (Kaixana) Tribe of NW Brazil, in Spix's time, spoke the today just about extinct language Kaixana (Cawishana, Kawishana, Kaishana).
--

Calalp said:

Note that Spix's "Macropus caixana" was claimed to "Habitat in sylvis fluvii Tonantins" [Lives in the forests of River Tonantins], and that "Tonantins" (here alt. here) does point at the same region around Solimões River (the upper stretches of the Amazon River in Brazil, with the Rio Negro upstream to the border of Peru) ... where the indigenous Caixana (Kaixana) Tribe lives (here), in Northwestern Brazil (far, far from Caxias, in the state Piauí, on the opposite side of Brazil).

Click to expand...

Yes, in the case of the cuckoo, the name, if chosen in reference to the Caixana people, may have a geographical implication.

In the case of the conure, this seems unlikely, on the other hand. Spix described Aratinga caixana as very similar to "the preceding species" in his book, i.e., his Aratinga flaviventer, the main plumage difference being some yellow secondary wing feathers in caixana. He did not provide any 'Habitat' statement for caixana, but suggested it was possibly but a variant of flaviventer, which he said was found in "Pyauhy" (= Piauí). Hellmayr 1906, who studied Spix's types, identified both flaviventer and caixana as Conurus cactorum (Kuhl) (now Aratinga/Eupsittula cactorum), and suggested the caixana type was a partly albinistic specimen. ("Das Original von A. caixana trägt auf jedem Flügel einige ganz gelbe Armschwingen, also Zeichen von Albinismus.") Eupsittula cactorum is found only in arid eastern Brazil, not at all in the upper Amazon.

I imagine that here the name might be a reference to the bright feather armbands that people from some South American native tribes (including the Caixanas?) wear--but this hypothesis admittedly does not rest on any hard evidence.

On the other hand, Spix apparently didn´t know from where the "Aratinga caixana" originated (like you pointed out; no Habitat mentioned), but simply noted it was similar looking to "flaviventer" ...

The location for "flaviventer" written as "Contendas ac Joazeiro et in Pyauhy", the former location which I guess (!) is today's Juazeiro, in Bahia, NE Brazil, is some distance from Caxias, "Pyauhy"/Piauí ... however; both locations still fits today's distribution of the Cactus Parakeet subspecies (Conorus/Aratinga) Eupsittula cactorum caixana SPIX 1824.

Also see here and here (the latter in Portuguese I think), if of any relevance or interest?

That´s all, this far, that I can contribute with ....

Now it´ll be interesting to hear James´s opinion!
---

I simply couldn´t keep my fingers away ...

Also worth to consider is the facts that von Spix, during his travels in Brazil (1817-1820) did visit "Die Indianer Cauixana" [sic] (here) mentioned in Volume 3 (published 1831); Neuntes Buch, III. Kapitel (9th Book 9, third Chapter), pp. 1181–1196 and IV. Kapitel (fourth Chapter), pp. 1197–1290.

I think the "Cauixánas" are mentioned for the first time on p.1185 as "Krokidilfresser" (Crocodile-gluttons, i.e. Alligator-eaters)! If that text by von Spix himself makes anything a bit clearer is beyond my grasp! It´s all in German, and vol. 3 is not to be found in its English version in BHL (only vol. 1-2).

Also noteworthy is that todays Caxias, the municipality in NE Brazil, is spelled in the same way, as (Villa) de Caxias ou Aldeas Altas on the map Geographische Karte Der Provinz von São Iozé do Piauhý, in the Atlas from the same Journey! Here (ca. Lat 46°, Long.5°)

I assume there is more to understand in this matter ... (for anyone who understand German).

On my behalf I cannot make any sense of it; caixana ... Caixas, Caxias, Caixana (Kaixana), Cauixana, Caixanas ... what a mess! No wonder it´s hard to figure out. Well, I´m stuck ...

Good luck on this one!
--

Calalp said:

I think the "Cauixánas" are mentioned for the first time on p.1185 as "Krokidilfresser" (Crocodile-gluttons, i.e. Alligator-eaters)! If that text by von Spix himself makes anything a bit clearer is beyond my grasp!

Click to expand...

It says, in any case (on [p.1185] as you note):

Der Tonantin ist vom Stamme der Cauixánas bewohnt, welche als Krokodilfresser bekannt sind, und vor einigen Jahren ihren Missionär ermordet haben. Bei meiner ersten Erscheinung an ihren Wohnungen am Walde zeigten sie Furcht; aber bald kamen die Männer ganz nacht, und hinter ihnen mehrere ihrer Weiber und Kinder, im Gesichte schwarz und roth betupft, und mit Arm- und Kniebändern von Bast und Federn geziert, aus den Hütten hervor.

Click to expand...

...That is, in his very first sentence describing them, Spix immediately noted that they wore arm- and knee-bands made of raffia and feathers. This would tend to go in the sense of my hypothesis above (post #3), I think: Aratinga caixana characterized by its yellow secondary feathers, like a Caixana wearing a yellow feather arm-band.

(I don't think these are Caixanas (and their faces are not painted black and red, as Spix described), but what I had in mind in terms of arm-band was something like [this]. With Spix's bird being Fig.1 (i.e., the right-hand bird; beware of the caption inversion) [here].)

I guess the question still must be; why would von Spix name it/them caixana if he, in some whatever way, was connecting them to, as he himself wrote it, the Cauixana(s) ... ?

Björn

PS. Maybe he simply kept/found those birds in a box, or cage, (caixa, in Portuguese), derived from capsa, Latin, in its turn from capiō (capture, take)...

--

Calalp said:

I guess the question still must be; why would von Spix name it/them caixana if he, in some whatever way, was connecting them to, as he himself wrote it, the Cauixana(s) ... ?

Click to expand...

I cannot say for sure either, but would note that 'caixana' was in a Latin text, in a work authored by Spix alone and published in 1824; 'Cauixána' was in a German text, in a work co-authored and edited by Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius and published in 1831, five years after Spix's death. It's at the very least not clear that Spix himself ever wrote it Cauixána.
Anyway, I have no real doubt that the people living in the forests along the Tonantin (= type locality of Spix's Macropus caixana), which were called the Cauixánas in the 1831 volume of Reise in Brasilien, were those who are called Caixanas elsewhere (and much more often) -- those who used to speak the language Kaixana = Cawishana = Kawishana = Kaishana.

Calalp said:

PS. Maybe he simply kept/found those birds in a box, or cage, (caixa, in Portuguese), derived from capsa, Latin, in its turn from capiō (capture, take)...

Click to expand...

I guess I could imagine a 20th C author doing this type of thing... But an early-19th C German author in a book entirely written in Latin -- I find this much harder to believe.
(To my mind, he would never have mixed Portuguese with Latin, in a situation where a good Latin word existed to say the same thing. He would also most likely not have used this particular suffix, as it is usually almost exclusively associated to names of geographical places or persons. Thus, assuming he would have wanted to form an adjective with this meaning, something like 'capsalis' would have been immensely more likely than 'caixana'. But, anyway, I can't really believe either that he would ever have considered naming a bird on this type of 'feature'.)

l_raty said:

...thus making the specific name an apparent geographical adjective -- caixanus, -a, -um: from Caixas.

Click to expand...

The source for this hypothetical association of the epithet caixana to the locality of 'Caixas' = Caxias may be Hellmayr 1929 [here]:

While Spix fails to mention any locality, the specific term may have been intended as the latinized form of Caxias, a city in eastern Maranhao, visited by the Bavarian Expedition to Brazil.

Click to expand...

(This work also includes comments on Spix's original specimens; in English, this tlme, thus certainly easier to understand than the 1906 paper in German.)

The hypothesis was put forward taking into account the conure only; Hellmayr did not comment on the fact that Spix had also used the same species name for a cuckoo that obviously did not originate from the same area.
Neither did he note the grammatical treatment that, in both cases, suggests Spix did not regard this name as adjectival. (He himself treated Aratinga as feminine (e.g., "A. aurea"), thus the feminine ending presumably did not surprise him.)

Additional info about the gender of Aratinga Spix. (Just trying to have all the information in a single place.)

Our current treatment of Aratinga as feminine is based on David & Gosselin 2002:270:

Aratinga Spix, 1824, formed from the Tupi Indian word "arucatinga", was first established in combination with several masculine Latin adjectives, including aureus and luteus, and with the feminine geographical adjective caixana. The gender is thus not clearly indicated by the author, and Aratinga must be treated as feminine because it ends in a.

Click to expand...

Also on p.276 (bracketed headers taken from p.275; bracketed footnote taken from p.282):

[Genus name]
Aratinga, F (10):
[Correct spelling of selected species group names]
acuticaudata, aeruginosa, alticola (inv.), aurea, auricapillus (inv.), caixana, chloroptera, frontata, griseipecta (inv.), guarouba (inv.), haemorrhous (inv.)**, holochlora, jandaya (inv.), leucophthalma, mitrata, nana, neoxena, propinqua, strenua, surinama, xanthogenia.
----------------------------------
[** This name is not a latinized Greek adjective, but a noun phrase formed by two latinized Greek nouns.]

Click to expand...

(I'll beg to differ on their interpretation of haemorrhous which, in the absence of any etymological explanation, must be considered a straight latinization of the classical Greek adjective αἱμόρροος, -ον, which makes it variable.)

Laurent, you sure keep the "kettle boiling" and my interest awake ...

Here´s the only new link (that I´ve found) were "Caixána" has a direct connection to "Cauichana, Kauichana, Kawichanes" ...

What it´s telling us/pointing at? I haven´t got a clue!

Also see here, or could caixana possibly be from derived from Caiuechana (Caixana), here, as in "Rio Japurá Caiuechana" (Caixana), abother name for "rios Japurá Tocantins" ... !?

Hovever, even if the name "Rio Japurá Caiuechana" could, might (in whatever context) include the full stretch of the Rio Japurá (here) we are still far, far away from the westermost parts where we today find the Cactus Parakeet subspecies (Conorus/Aratinga) Eupsittula cactorum caixana. According to HBW its westernmost distribution is in the Eastern parts of the State Maranhão.

But ... could it be as simple as the OD of "Macropus caixana" instead was talking for the Brazilian state Tocantins (not the river, close to Peru)? The State Tocantins (here) is located directly southwest of the two States Maranhão and Piahuí!

Suddenly I think it would be very intersting to know which one of today's species is equal of von Spix's "Macropus caixana". Maybe it wasn´t found in that certain area, in the northwestermost of Brazil, where we find the Caixana/Cauxiana Indian Tribe at all! Couldn´t von Spix's "Habitat in sylvis fluvii Tonantins" also be read as "Inhabits river forests in Tonantins"? That would suddenly move the Type location far more to the East in (Central) Brazil!?

I´ve tried to understand the synonymity, but this Cuckoo seems far from easy to figure out. Synonyms of synonyms, ending up ... where?
--

"Habitat in sylvis fluvii Tonantins" = "Lives in the forests of the river Tonantins."
Spix says us, just a bit higher [on the very same page], about his Macropus phasianellus: "Habitat in sylvis Tonantins, fluvii lateralis fl. Salimoëns", i.e., "Lives in the forests of the Tonantins, a side river (= tributary) of the river Salimoëns".
The Rio Tonantins flows into the Solimões in Tonantins, Amazonas, see [this map].
(Beware also: Tonantins, not Tocantins. Google tends to mix them up, [Google maps] even calls the Rio Tonantins in Amazonas "Rio Tocantins" -- which your source above might (?) do as well; "Caiueshana (Caixana) -- rios Japurá - Tocantins" = the Caiueshana, also known as Caixanas, are/were to be found along the Rios Japurá and 'Tocantins'=Tonantins? As I understand it, Tocantins is a state, Tonantins a municipality in the state of Amazonas; both have a river bearing their name; the true Rio Tocantins flows northwards through the state of the same name, and from there, through the state of Pará, to the region of Belem.)


Re. the ID of Macropus caixana Spix, see Hellmayr 1906 [here]. Spix gave this name tentatively to two birds, calling them male and female of a single species, but with a question mark in the case of the female. Hellmayr identified:

• The male (#1 on the plate) as "Piaya rutila (Illiger)", citing Coccyzus minutus Vieillot as a synonym. That bird now goes under the latter species name, as Coccycua minuta (Vieillot), Little Cuckoo.
• The female (#2 on the plate) as "Piaya melanogastra (Vieillot)". We now write this Piaya melanogaster, Black-bellied Cuckoo.

From the distribution maps I have at hand, both are present in W Brazil and absent from the E; I think neither occurs anywhere sympatrically with Eupsittula cactorum; neither occurs in Caxias, Maranhão; both occur in Tonantins, Amazonas.

Sorry for your trouble, Laurent, and for any unneeded confusion, I should have noticed the difference between Tonantins vs Tocantins. Sloppy. I also, which I should have learned by know (sigh!), not have tried to make any attempts in trying to understand Latin .... It always ends up the same way, me getting it wrong. I will try to leave any future Latin words or phrases for you, or James, or others who do know how it works. You can expect a question or two!

Either way: thanks for the Cuckoo ID! Thereby, to me, this far, it does look like those two birds did originate from opposite corners of Brazil, making the shared caixana even more of a mystery.

Keep digging!

Björn

PS. At least, as a bonus of this thread, we cracked the "Capsa Sparrow"!
--

Still can´t let go of the caixa (Portuguese for cage, box) idea, as Hellmayr told us (in 1929): "The original specimen of A. caixana, a cage-bird with clipped wing- and tail-feathers ..." (here) ...





--

To my earlier objections (*), I might add that, even though Google translate offers "cage" as a traduction of caixa, this doesn't seem at all to be a primary meaning of the word in Portuguese. See, e.g., [Wiktionary]. The primary meanings appear the same as those of caisse in French - a box, in particular a money box, and building on this, a cashier, or a cash desk; also some type of drum.

(*) See above; but, basically:

1. this makes the name adjectival and feminine, which in turn requires to accept that Spix was (twice, in an identical way !?) inconsistent with his Latin grammar, and I see no suggestion elsewhere that this was the case;
2. to my mind, this would amount to, say, naming a species in Swedish "Cagesk parakit" on account that the specimen would have spent some time in a cage in a country where people speak English... Would you do this?

Caixa is still used for a bank in Catalan ...

Niels

l_raty said:

... Would you do this?

Click to expand...

Nope! That's highly unlikely.

Point made, point taken.

Björn

PS. This said, meaning that I, personally, certainly wouldn´t, but I´ve seen awkward names (in Swedish books), like for example "Scintillans kopparfasan", for the subspecies Syrmaticus soemmerringii scintillans, a vernacular term most Swedes would interpret as "[Mr.] Scintillan's Copper Pheasant"(!), but, sure, I´m with you, von Spix most likely wouldn´t tamper with languages in such an unorthodox way!
--

Another origin to consider (even if only for the Parakeet) is the periodic watercourse: Rio da Caixa ... ?

Also located along (or close to) the route followed by Martius and Spix between 1817 and 1820 (see map here)

However; if this name ever was used in Latin (or German) is unknown to me.

__

While perusing through Spix's work, I stumbled, interestingly, upon a rather similar (in my reading) name: Picus jumana Spix 1824:57 [here]. In this particular case, Spix explained:

...secundum tribum indicam Jumana a me nominatus...

Click to expand...

(= ...named by me after the indian tribe Jumana...)

These are the Jumána/Shumána/Yumána indians, another tribe from upper Amazon, which is also cited in Spix's Reise in Brasilien, e.g. [here].

Note that Spix treated this name as
(1) not adjectival, as he introduced it in combination with Picus, which is universally treated as masculine including, unquestionably, by Spix himself (combined with robustus, lineatus, dominicanus, ochraceus, macrocephalus, guttatus, hirundinaceus (in text, ablative hirundinaceo), icterocephalus; qualified in the text of being (in this order): niger, majusculus, niger, variegatus, fasciolatus, nominatus, cristatus, cinnamomeus, nominatus, majusculus, niger, lineatus, vocatus, commutatus, niger, sulfureus, solitarius, apellatus, niger, ferrugineus, maculatus, niger, stramineus, subcristatus, niger, fasciolatus, guttatus, nominatus, niger, fasciolatus, striatus, fasciolatus, olivaceus, fasciolatus, all of which without any exception are masculine), whithout making it agree in gender with this genus name; but even, apparently, as
(2) wholly undeclinable, as he refrained from giving it the accusative -am ending (*), that any first-declension Latin word would have needed in the above-quoted sentence.

Yet, to my surprise, I then discovered that David & Gosselin 2002 [here] made this name variable, arguing that it ends in a Latin adjectival suffix. (The name had been universally treated as invariable before this, see "Celeus elegans jumanus" [sic] in their Appendix [here].)

So I'm a bit lost, now.

------
(*) ...or genitive plural -arum, meaning "the indian tribe of the Jumánas", then.

As ever von Spix 1824, gave no immediate reasoning behind his choices of specific name for the parrot Aratinga caixana ( = subsp. Eupsittula cactorum) and the cuckoo Macropus caixana (= syn. Coccycua minuta), found at opposite ends of Brazil. The cuckoo is described from the Rio Tonantins, Amazonas, n.w. Brazil, the parrot (by inference from its associated species Aratinga flaviventer (= syn. Eupsittula cactorum)) in Maranhão, Ceará and Piauí, n.e. Brazil. I think Laurent is correct in associating the cuckoo with the indigenous Amazonian peoples, the Caixana (mirroring jumana). However, since the Caixana do not live in eastern Brazil, I believe the parrot name must, by default and following Hellmayr 1929, be associated with Caxias - altho' I am much tempted by Björn's Rio da Caixa! I do not think von Spix would have succumbed to the cage-bird and feathered ornaments theories, but am currently working on the correct way to express these varied suggestions in the Key entry.