Nice to see so much traffic here, I hope you'll excuse me picking up this thread again, as I'm in digest mode. As you say Jim, Latinizing was done in Sweden, by the learned classes, it was Linnés Grandfather who first called himself Linneus, and in fact Linné changed to Carl von Linné when he got his nobility. The naming system of plants was very likely an extension of the way people named themselves. I noticed the Latin feminine ending too, and since it's a quote from Goldblatt & Manning I'm sure Elizabeth Moraea is correct. Peter asks if the first version of the name was too early to take priority, and Randy correctly say's it doesn't count in nomenclature rules. The rule is that names before Linné (more exactly 1st May 1753) don't count. Interestingly this was only decided in 1905 at the first international conference of Botany. And why Linné decided to change Morea to Moraea is really only speculation, it could be because Linné thought it was better Latin, or simply he was having a bit of fun! Best regards Neil > > Thanks for that intriguing post, Neil. > ? > I'll bet that just about everyone who participates in this list knows that > Linnaeus is?a Latin form name based on the the word for linden tree.? But > Neil, your post has added a new dimension to this story for me because > from what you have told us, it must have been a common practice for > Swedish people of education to Latinize their names. So in a sense, what > Linnaeus did with plant names was largely an extension of what > some?Swedish people were already doing with their family names. > ? > And I noticed something else interesting: you gave the Latinized family > name?in two forms: a feminine form and a masculine form.?I'm familiar with > this practice in other modern languages such as Polish; would that have > been the usual practice among Swedish families with Latinized names?in the > eighteenth century? In other words would Elizabeth have been introduced to > friends in a formal setting as Elizabeth Moraea and?her father-in- > law?introduced as Johan Moraeus? > ? > In the modern world those names would sort differently - ha ha! > > ? > Jim McKenney > jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com > Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871? North, 77.09829? West, USDA > zone