On Jul 26, 2010, at 10:59 AM, totototo@telus.net wrote: > As a general rule, once a botanist has bestowed appropriate > epithets on a > taxon, the rules of Latin pronunciation and prosody take over. In > particular, > "gatesii" would have all four vowels clearly sounded, roughly gah- > tea-see-eye. > Of course, epithets based on Pinyin (romanized Chinese) present letter > combinations unknown to the ancients, hence all bets are off. For > that matter, > even such epithets as "winogradowii" and "mlokosewitschii" are > significantly > non-Latinate. Sorry, Rodger, but I would respectfully disagree. The reason for naming a plant--either genus or specific epithet--after a person is to honor that person's botanical or horticultural achievements and to perpetuate that person's name for future generations. This is done by adding the appropriate latinized ending to the name itself, according to international rules for botanical nomenclature established and amended by periodic International Botanical Congresses. As such, only the ending is latinized. The name should be pronounced as closely as possible to the way the person commemorated pronounced his/her name in the original language. William T. Stern, author of Botanical Latin: History, Grammar, Syntax, Terminology and Vocabulary (New York: Hafner, 1966), discusses the ramifications of this rule at the end of his chapter on "The Latin Alphabet and Pronunciation." He notes, "The main difficulty is that this method involves giving a German pronunciation to 'Heuchera', a French pronunciation to 'Choisya', a Scottish pronunciation to 'Menziesia', an Italian pronunciation to 'cesiatianus', a Polish pronunciation to 'przewalskii, etc., and to do this is more than most botanists and gardeners can manage." In this chapter, Stern also notes that "the rules [of Latin prosody] cannot be applied satisfactorily to all generic names and specific epithets commemorating persons." Furthermore, Stern states that " about 80 per cent of generic names and 30 per cent of specific epithets come from languages other than Latin and Greek." Some of us have wider linguistic backgrounds than others, but none of us can recognize the linguistic origin and proper pronunciation of all commemorative plant names. Still, we should make the attempt to learn the original pronunciation in recognition of the person commemorated. It is also fun and often enlightening to learn something of the biography of this person--particularly if the name honors the discoverer of a geophyte that interests us. Since Gates is an English name, "gates-ee-eye" is both the easiest and the correct pronunciation. John C. MacGregor South Pasadena, CA 91030 USDA zone 9 Sunset zones 21/23