janvanderbrugge
Well-known member
For the nomenclatural and grammatical fanatics among my "colleagues".
When checking a number of "nomina nuda" in my list of epithetons/epitheta, (nomina nuda in this case: specific and subspecific names without any explanation of the person's names) I stumbled into a name janeti (spelled janetti in Clement's checklist): Ammomanes deserti janeti, Desert Lark. The name was published in Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, 53, 1933, p.151, in a list of subspecies, presented by Colonel Jack Vincent, well-known English zoologist and conservationist; he did collecting expeditions in E and S Africa, was later director of Natal Parks, Game & Fish Preservation Board and editor of The Ostrich (the South-African counterpart of The Ibis and The Auk).
My list gave a source: Dekeyser & Villiers, Contrib.Mauritanie, who said that Meinertzhagen was the author of the name janeti. Could be right, because Vincent tells us in his enumeration of new forms: "Col. R.Meinertzhagen sent the following descriptions of two forms of Ammomanes deserti from the Ahaggar Plateau, central Sahara." In BBOC there is no explanation about the choice of the names of these subspecies.
In "Biographical Key - Names of birds of the world", 1969, a printed list of type-writer work by Colonel Owen Wynne, the name is explained as follows:
"for Janet Clay (*1907), now Mrs. H.S.Wood, Ahaggar 1931, sister of Theresa Clay." Theresa Clay, entolomologist, was the companion and also scientific partner of Colonel Meinertzhagen, who was so much inspired by his "Tessa", that quite a number of bird forms have been blessed with the subspecific term theresae. However, being a sister of Theresa, how could Janet be honoured with the name janeti? I suppose Meinertzhagen was well aware of the obliged termination forms of Latin specific names. Of course, janeti sounds exactly like janetae (if that version would have been chosen), so in dictating there could always be a mistake in spelling, but after all there are editors and others to prevent such errors before publication . . .
Well, no harm done to nomenclature, for - although Vincent declared that the new form had nothing to do with the earlier published subspecies geyri - janeti has later been synonymized with A.deserti geyri (or whitakeri).
I now remember a comparable case, from 1996. The Brazilian ornithologist F.Lencioni-Neto published: "Uma nova subespécie de Knipolegus (Aves, Tyrannidae) do Estado de Bahia, Brasil" in Revista Brasileira Biológica, 56 (2), 1996, p.197. ♂ + ♀ were collected at Mucuge, Bahia, Brazil and described under the name Knipolegus nigerrimus hoflingi, in honour of Brazilian ornithologist Elisabeth Höfling. In writing hoflingi Lencioni might have had a real "black-out" because of "nigerrimus" . . .
I found out there was a José Francisco Höfling at the Laboratório de Microbiologia e Imunologia, Facultade de Odontologia de Piracicaba, São Paulo, but no connection. Afterwards this bird received a more fitting name: the IOC World Bird List, in an Update of 15 January, 2015 (!), ordered to hoflingi: "Change to feminine genitive.", so since then the subspecific name is hoflingae. (Correctly the name Höfling was not rendered as hoefling- in the new subspecific term, that adaptation is restricted to German names)
By the way, in a recent discussion on this forum about the activities of women in ornithology, Elisabeth Höfling's name did not come up, nor that of Elsie Naumburg or Emilia Snethlage, Mary Lecroy and several other female ornithologists of North America. Only Maria Köpcke of Peru seems to have established enough impression for spontaneous recalling of her name. To the German/Brazilian Emilia (who even was rewarded with a generic name Snethlagea) I thank some of my oldest detailed information on neotropical avifauna, since I struggled through her "Avas Amazónicas" very long ago, without any knowledge of Portuguese then . . . My files still contain some bird names from her little book, which I have not been able to attach to a valid Brazilian species/subspecies!
Well, I hope you keep enjoying all this nomenclatorial lecture, like I do!
Kind regards,
Jan van der Brugge, Netherlands
When checking a number of "nomina nuda" in my list of epithetons/epitheta, (nomina nuda in this case: specific and subspecific names without any explanation of the person's names) I stumbled into a name janeti (spelled janetti in Clement's checklist): Ammomanes deserti janeti, Desert Lark. The name was published in Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, 53, 1933, p.151, in a list of subspecies, presented by Colonel Jack Vincent, well-known English zoologist and conservationist; he did collecting expeditions in E and S Africa, was later director of Natal Parks, Game & Fish Preservation Board and editor of The Ostrich (the South-African counterpart of The Ibis and The Auk).
My list gave a source: Dekeyser & Villiers, Contrib.Mauritanie, who said that Meinertzhagen was the author of the name janeti. Could be right, because Vincent tells us in his enumeration of new forms: "Col. R.Meinertzhagen sent the following descriptions of two forms of Ammomanes deserti from the Ahaggar Plateau, central Sahara." In BBOC there is no explanation about the choice of the names of these subspecies.
In "Biographical Key - Names of birds of the world", 1969, a printed list of type-writer work by Colonel Owen Wynne, the name is explained as follows:
"for Janet Clay (*1907), now Mrs. H.S.Wood, Ahaggar 1931, sister of Theresa Clay." Theresa Clay, entolomologist, was the companion and also scientific partner of Colonel Meinertzhagen, who was so much inspired by his "Tessa", that quite a number of bird forms have been blessed with the subspecific term theresae. However, being a sister of Theresa, how could Janet be honoured with the name janeti? I suppose Meinertzhagen was well aware of the obliged termination forms of Latin specific names. Of course, janeti sounds exactly like janetae (if that version would have been chosen), so in dictating there could always be a mistake in spelling, but after all there are editors and others to prevent such errors before publication . . .
Well, no harm done to nomenclature, for - although Vincent declared that the new form had nothing to do with the earlier published subspecies geyri - janeti has later been synonymized with A.deserti geyri (or whitakeri).
I now remember a comparable case, from 1996. The Brazilian ornithologist F.Lencioni-Neto published: "Uma nova subespécie de Knipolegus (Aves, Tyrannidae) do Estado de Bahia, Brasil" in Revista Brasileira Biológica, 56 (2), 1996, p.197. ♂ + ♀ were collected at Mucuge, Bahia, Brazil and described under the name Knipolegus nigerrimus hoflingi, in honour of Brazilian ornithologist Elisabeth Höfling. In writing hoflingi Lencioni might have had a real "black-out" because of "nigerrimus" . . .
I found out there was a José Francisco Höfling at the Laboratório de Microbiologia e Imunologia, Facultade de Odontologia de Piracicaba, São Paulo, but no connection. Afterwards this bird received a more fitting name: the IOC World Bird List, in an Update of 15 January, 2015 (!), ordered to hoflingi: "Change to feminine genitive.", so since then the subspecific name is hoflingae. (Correctly the name Höfling was not rendered as hoefling- in the new subspecific term, that adaptation is restricted to German names)
By the way, in a recent discussion on this forum about the activities of women in ornithology, Elisabeth Höfling's name did not come up, nor that of Elsie Naumburg or Emilia Snethlage, Mary Lecroy and several other female ornithologists of North America. Only Maria Köpcke of Peru seems to have established enough impression for spontaneous recalling of her name. To the German/Brazilian Emilia (who even was rewarded with a generic name Snethlagea) I thank some of my oldest detailed information on neotropical avifauna, since I struggled through her "Avas Amazónicas" very long ago, without any knowledge of Portuguese then . . . My files still contain some bird names from her little book, which I have not been able to attach to a valid Brazilian species/subspecies!
Well, I hope you keep enjoying all this nomenclatorial lecture, like I do!
Kind regards,
Jan van der Brugge, Netherlands
