...the curious vernacular name 'Margelanic Lesser Whitethroat.
Richard you are not saying the scientific name is wrong only the vernacular common name?
In Oiseaux de la Ferghana by Stolzmann, the original description in an article starting on,
Page 54:
http://books.google.com/books?id=XDAYAAAAYAAJ&dq=Sylvia+margelanica&source=gbs_navlinks_s .
He spells the city’s name Marguelane. Not sure that makes a difference from Margilan. Stolzmann does say that the two skins from Margilan, one in May and one in April , “It is possible that these two birds belong to an unknown form, which migrated to the Ferghana accidentally (from) some unexplored country”.
The city name comes from a time when Alexander the Great went through this area and was the local term for Bread & Chicken.
Grammatically, there are two kinds of commemorative epithets, substantival and adjectival.
An adjectival commemorative epithet is a noun converted to an adjective by the addition of a suffix, which is inflected in accordance with the gender of the generic name but is not affected by the sex or number of the person(s) being commemorated.
ii) "-icus" or "-ica" is a Latin suffix denoting belonging to or pertaining to; e.g., Rana sylvatica is a frog pertaining to the forest (sylva = Latin for forest), or "wood frog".
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-icus .
A species-series nomen must be ‘‘a word of two or more letters, or a compound word’’, and be, or be treated as, either an adjective or a participle in the nominative singular agreeing in grammatical gender with the generic nomen, a noun in the nominative singular standing in apposition to the generic nomen, or a noun or an adjective in the genitive case (Art. 11.9).
In Latham’s Index Ornithologicus, Sive Systema Ornithologiae he has the Megellanic Penguin “habitat terra Megellanica Statuum”, this is Latin for Magellan Straights. And Forster called it Aptenodytes megellanica. So it not named for Magellan but for the geographical area the Straights of Magellan. There was an Old Margilan and a New Margilan in Stolczmann’s time so he may of used –ica for pertaining to the Margilan area? AS for the englishizing of Latin to megellanic or Margilanic who knows.??