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Abdim's alt. Ab(i)din's Stork ... !? (1 Viewer)

Björn Bergenholtz

(former alias "Calalp")
Sweden
Sorry guys, I have to re-open this one (again!), in a brand new thread, as this matter is starting to get a bit hard (close to impossible) to follow, having been discussed in two different, each one multi-diverging, sprawling threads, ... bear with me, and try to follow the many twists and turns of it, but now I will try to wrap up the far to looooong abdimii-issue, as in ...

• Abdim's Stork (Sphenorhynchus) Ciconia abdimii LICHTENSTEIN 1823 (here) a k a abdimstork (in Swedish ... that´s why I cannot let go of it!)

This issue started (I confess) over three years ago, with my thread Some additional etymological information – Part I (of 15th August 2014), see Post #1 (here; "No. 4 – abdimii"), after a while picked up in Posts #29, that led to; #30, #31, #32, #33, #34, #35, #36, #37, #38, #39, ending up in #40 ... thereafter reopened (in July 2016), in the even more winding thread Assistance with basic bird etymology, where it was dealt with in several Posts, as follows (detours excluded); Post No. #1, #3, #4, #8, #10, #11, #16, #17, #22 (first part), #23, #25, #26, #27, #28, #36, and #39.

The reason for starting it all up was that I questioned some details found in various sources regarding the commemoration of this Eponym, for example the entry in Whose Bird? by Beolens and Watkins (2003):
Bey El-Arnaut Abdim (1780–1827) was a Turkish govenor of Dongala in Sudan from 1821 until 1827. […]
The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird names (2010) told us:
El Arnaut Abdim Beğ (1780–1827), Albanian Governor of Dongala Province, Egyptian Sudan 1821–1825 (Spenorhynchus)
And in today's HBW Alive Key we find it as:
abdimii
Abdin Beğ al-Arnaut (c. 1780-1827) Khedival Army, Albanian Gov. of Dongola Province, Egyptian Sudan 1821-1825 (his name has also been spelled Abdim, Abdi, Abidin, or Abdeen (Björn Bergenholtz in litt.)); "Hanc multorum laborum tandem acceptum gratum atque iucundum pretium habuimus et in memoriam benevoli et amici nostri protectoris et provinciae dongalanae turcici praefecti Abdim Beg, Abdimii nomine appellavimus" (Hemprich & Ehrenberg 1833) (Ciconia).
No doubt we have the right "guy", but one main question still remain to be solved: Is/was this Stork Ciconia abdimii named for Mr. Abidin (as I claim) or Mr. Abdin ... ?

In my MS all of this has ended up with:

abdimii
= a Mr. Abidin [i.e. Ābidīn] (ca. 1780–1827), of Albanian heritage, governor of Dongala from 1821 until his death, in 1827 (when killed, by his own Ottoman soldiers, in an uprising, in the city of Manfalut, on the Nile ) … whose full name nobody seem to know, a k a "Abidin Bey/Beğ al-Arnaut" literarly written Ābidīn Beğ al-Arnā’ūt or ‛Ābidin Bey al-Arnaā’ūț (most of it, expect the Abidin part, is titles and denominations, not his actual name) … a guy who, among friends, was called simply "Abdi" (i.e. Abdī).

The OD, as ealier noted, only tell us (in my interpretation!): "… in honorem Abdimii Principis … " = "… in honour of (the) leader (Beğ)" Abidin …"

My main source for this position is (as said in Post #40):
Hill, Richard Leslie. 1967. A Biographical Dictionary of the Sudan, The Second Edition of A Biographical Dictionary of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1951, Clarendon Press, Oxford). Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., London. (here, pp.19-20 or see the attached pdf) ... which, to me, looks like the most reliable text (in detail), of the ones we´ve seen this far.

This only leave me with one other simple (or not?), short question (similar to the one I asked in the original Post #1, kindly answered by Laurent, Post #3): Could abdimii possibly (in some odd way) be a version of: abdimus, abdima?

Or is such a Latin version/interpretation grammatically unthinkable?
:scribe:
Björn
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Attachments

  • Hill, R L. 1967. A Biographical Dictionary of the Sudan.pdf
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This only leave me with one other simple (or not?), short question (similar to the one I asked in the original Post #1, kindly answered by Laurent, Post #3): Could abdimii possibly (in some odd way) be a version of: abdimus, abdima?

Or is such a Latin version/interpretation grammatically unthinkable?
-i endings in scientific species names that are Latin or Latinized are normally second-declension genitives. (In Latin, an -i ending can also be a second-declension nominative plural; or a third-declension dative; or an -i variant of a third-declension ablative (-e ending, in principle); or even a couple of other things such as a conjugated verb, an adverb or a preposition; but these things should not normally occur in scientific species names. Of course a wholly non-Latin word might conceivably end in anything, though.)

Literally, "Abdimii" is "of Abdimius", where "Abdimius" can be safely assumed to be a Latinisation of "Abdim", which is how Hemprich & Ehrenberg wrote his name in a non-Latinized form in the text quoted in the Key.

("Hanc [...] in memoriam benevoli et amici nostri protectoris et provinciae dongalanae turcici praefecti Abdim Beg, Abdimii nomine appellavimus" : "We named it by the name Abdimii, in memory of our kind and friendly protector and Turkish governor of the Dongalan province Abdim Beg." (original [here], from 1828).
H&E are the ones who coined the species name; cf. Lichtenstein in the [OD], published while H&E were still in Africa:
"C. Abdimii n. Sphenorynchus Abdimii Hempr. et Ehrenb. in litteris." = "Ciconia Abdimii nobis. Sphenorynchus Abdimii Hemprich & Ehrenberg in litt.";
"a peregrinatoribus borussicis in honorem Abdimii Principis, qui a patre Mehemed Ali Nubiae provinciam tenet, hoc nomine insignita." = "denoted by this name by the Prussian travellers, in honour of 'Prince' Abdimius, who holds the province of Nubia from [his] 'father' Mehemed Ali.")

Note that, in practice, Ottomans used the Arabic alphabet back then -- thus I presume his "true" name may well have been something like "عابدين" (at least this is how it is written [in Arabic in Wikipedia]), with the various spellings we find in the literature being really just different transliterations of that...?
(I think the sometimes-present, sometimes-absent 'i' in "Abidin" is pronounced but not written in Arabic writing.)

"Bey", modern Turkish "Beğ", is an Ottoman title.
"al-Arnaut": "al-" is presumably the Arabic definite article, "the"; "Arnaut", modern Turkish "Arnavut", is a Turkish way to say "Albanian".
 
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...but one main question still remain to be solved: Is/was this Stork Ciconia abdimii named for Mr. Abidin (as I claim) or Mr. Abdin ... ?
...

Can't help with the identity of the person, but since this thread depends so much on minutiae of language: it was only named for him, if he requested its naming ("will you name this for me, please"). If it is honorific (as seems likely), it was named after him.

An often-neglected, but important, distinction :t:
 
Thank you, Laurent, for yet another excellent explanation. :t: Apparently this restarted issue, and your reply, was enough to convince James, as the updated HBW Alive Key now tell us:
abdimii
'Abidin Beğ al-Arna'ut (c. 1780-1827) ...
Thereby; no reason to reconsider (even if I choose to skip his titel and denomination).

Serenity rules!

Björn

PS. Also note that this is how his name (most often) is written in many texts (i.e.; whithout connection neither to Ornithology, nor the ever-repeated "Abdim", from the OD), like; here alt. here.

PPS. And "Nutcracker", bear with me, English is not my mother tounge, however I will try to remember your remark (shouldn´t be too hard, it's namngiven efter, in Swedish) ... I wonder how you would react when reading Henry Gannett's The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (here). There sure are a lot of "requests" in that book! ;)
--
 
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PPS. And "Nutcracker", bear with me, English is not my mother tounge, however I will try to remember your remark (shouldn´t be too hard, it's namngiven efter, in Swedish) ...

On the other hand there are many native English speakers for whom "named for" and "named after" are uncontroversially synonymous...
 
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