Thank you, Ben. Something seems to have gotten confused here. For the most part, I'm on your team, Ben. When you write " A large part of your problem with latinized names stems from the fact that you try to pronounce as if it was english That is not of great help." The problem is not, as you say, that I am trying to pronounce English names as if they were English names. They are English names. The "problem" is that I reject as ridiculous the notion that these names have been Latinized. You also say "Of course no one knows how the romans prounced it but the roman languages as they now exist are a far better approximation than the english language, that has forgotten to adapt the written words to the spoken words." (my bolding, and apologies to those whose e-mail does not support it) BRAVO! You have hit the nail squarely on the head! Look at the history of the modern European languages. Although there are exceptions, more so during our times, historically when these languages adopted a word from another language, the word which came into the borrowing language was spelled in such a way that the sounds of the original word in the other language were, in so far as the sound structure of the borrowing language would allow, preserved. If both the source language and the borrowing language used the Latin alphabet, the word would have been re-spelled to reproduce in the borrowing language the approximate sounds of the source language. In the modern world, there has been a shift to worship the written word. As a result, there has been a growing tendency (apt to be all but universal in the English-speaking world) to borrow words from other languages and while ignoring the pronunciation of those words preserving religiously the spelling as it exists in the source language. Not in my world does a pattern of ink on a piece of paper replace the living, breathing sound that is the true word. One result of this is that the average Joe of the English-speaking world (already notorious for his ethnocentricity and lack of interest in foreign languages) has a splendid vocabulary of mispronounced words of foreign origin. And he thinks the foreigners are being snotty when they correct his pronunciation. In this country we have had a huge and wonderfully invigorating influx of words of foreign origin brought by immigrants (and all of us are immigrants here because humans are not native to North America). Most of us learn about those words from print media. Print media, of course, carry no pronunciation guides as a rule. Thus, when I see in the newspaper a word with ll ( double l), I'm often stumped. If it is of Italian origin, it should be pronounced on way. If it is of Spanish origin, it should be pronounced another way. Just when I think I am getting the hang of distinguishing Italian and Spanish, someone will throw in a Portuguese word with the ll - and I feel like a dummy again. When the average Joe tries to read the label at a zoo for Przewalski's horse (or in the garden, tries to pronounce Ligularia przewalskii), things get very creative. All of this could have been avoided if we had stuck to the time-honored practice of re-spelling borrowed words to reflect their pronunciation. Or at least, in the news media, if we had stuck to the once prevalent practice of italicizing words of foreign origin. There seems to be a growing uncertainty in the print media about this. Now, to get back on a favorite hobby horse: botanical names which preserve the spelling of original, non-romance source language can, in my book, hardly be said to have been Latinized. Let's go back to the example used in the earlier post, the name Sloane. I'm assuming that this is an English-language name, pronounced as a one-syllable word. If you want to reproduce the sound of that name in Latin, you write simply slon. But of course at this point, your honoree Sloane squawks "my name is unrecognizable". So you give in and spell the botanical name Sloanea. Is that really any better? We have successfully stroked the vanity of one person, and in doing so have inconvenienced a great many other potential users of this name. Persons who do not speak English can be excused for wondering how to pronounce such a name (and as you can see in my earlier post, I was not all that sure myself). If you think the name is Latin, you will pronounce it with four syllables: slo-a-ne-a. And your honoree Sloan will be squawking again. If you are a non-English speaking botanist at a conference and pronounce it the way it looks (as a four syllable word), perhaps one of your English-speaking colleagues will nudge you gently and suggest that you drop a syllable. Or perhaps the less charitable ones will be snickering in the background as you try to figure out what is so funny. Furthermore, how do you apply the traditional rule for determining the position of the accent to such a word. The critical vowel, the vowel of the penultimate syllable, the e which ends the name Sloane, is SILENT! In the case of the word Sloane, a better solution would have been to recognize the silent vowel and treat the botanical name as one based on a word which ends in a consonant (as the spoken word Sloane does end with a consonant sound). To my way of thinking it would have made much better sense to spell the botanical name Sloaneia. That at least would have implied to users of the Rules that something funny was going on in the pronunciation of the word Sloane, that the final e was silent. Jim McKenney Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, USDA zone 7, where there's nothing silent about me.