Tim, to the classicist the oe in foetidus is pronounced oi. Classicists themselves don't always agree about these things, and in particular there is debate about this very word foetidus. Perhaps you are wondering how anyone would think they know how it was pronounced two thousand years ago? There are several sorts of evidence, but the easiest for most of us to understand is the evidence from the way the Romans wrote Greek words. When Romans took Greek words which had the oi sound, they wrote them with the letter combination oe. Greek evidently had the oi sound and wrote it as oi (omicron-iota). So see what happened: the educated Romans could read Greek, they could see the oi (omicron-iota) which looked a lot like the their letters o and i, but they did not use their letters o and i to spell the Greek words because in Latin the letter combination oi represents the o sound followed by the i sound; it does not represent the oi sound of oink in Latin. In Latin, oi is not a diphthong (which is why purists do not use the oink sound but instead separate the o and i sounds in botanical words ending in, for instance, -oides. Incidentally, note that I have not answered your question, I've simply used it as an excuse to give my version of things. You asked what the consensus is. I have no idea. Someone else will have to answer that one. But I don't follow the consensus. The word Fuchsia as a botanical name honors Leonhard Fuchs, a sixteenth century German botanist. If you want to commemorate him, pronounce the word fooks-ee-a. Your Danish friend's problem is not the result of his pronunciation; it's the result of the nearly universal mispronunciation in the English-speaking world of the word to which you allude. In Latin the e is a long e and the first syllable is thus pronounced pay-, not pee-. Joe Six Pack pronounces it pee because that's all he probably does with it. (Am I in trouble?) Are you sure about Rachelus? Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/