Talk:Felis domestica

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There is not too much wrong with this entry (Language?), but I think that it really belongs in Wikispecies. Or are we to add the Latinized binomial name of every other organism here as well? SemperBlotto 10:54, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nearly any and every dictionary worth its hard copy has the "Latinized binomial Name" of the animals in it, SB...it really should be there. But I have seen a few places without it as well. I think people may look to the dictionary to "Find" those names, sometimes, no? --HiFlyer 15:49, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, I can uderstand people looking up orangutan to find its binomial name, but how many people would look up Pongo pygmaeus to find out what animal it was? SemperBlotto 15:55, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What if only one person did, and found it here? Would that be a waste? --HiFlyer 18:09, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm actually quite keen now to find out what sort of creature the Pongo pygmaeus is. Ncik 21 Mar 2005

But the point that I was trying to make is that they WOULD find Pongo pygmaeus in Wikispecies, so why duplicate it here. (or, at least they will find it eventually as there seems to be about one man and his dog doing anything on that wiki so far). SemperBlotto 22:38, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC) p.s. its the orangutan.

Every word in every language, no? "Felis domesticus" is a technical collocation in scientific Latin, and belongs here just as much as, say, deoxyribonucleic acid. —Muke Tever 23:51, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

But how do I know that I can find Pongo pygmaeus in Wikispecies if I don't know that it is an animal or plant or whatever they specify in Wikispecies? Ncik 22 Mar 2005

Doesn't this wiktionary have a {{wikispecies}} template yet? —Muke Tever 17:08, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK. "Every word in every language" does the trick. Now we just have to get it right. According to w:felis it should be Felis silvestris - no mention of domesticus. SemperBlotto 08:14, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC) (I shall remove the rfd in the meantime)

I don't know. It certainly has been "Felis domesticus" in the past, and it doesn't become less so by not being the current technical term. Mark it as obsolete, or historical, and refer to the current preferred name. [I've noticed a lot of species names in Webster 1913 are outdated... when adding them to a definition I try to put effort in to find the current name -- not always easy, as the common name itself has often changed since then. Is Wikispecies trying to be a reference for this kind of thing?] As for w:Felis not mentioning it, w:Cat's first paragraph mentions all of Felis silvestris catus, Felis silvestris domesticus, Felis domesticus, and Felis catus. —Muke Tever 17:08, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

And now I'm suffering from doublethink - I have added an "English" section to felis to describe the genus. There was already a Latin translation. Which made me think - for languages other than English, aren't we supposed to give just a simple translation? Does that mean we have to change Felis domesticus to just say cat? SemperBlotto 17:38, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, IMO. The way it stands now, with "name for...", is bad definition style to begin with: we know it's a name already—we come here to learn that it means housecat in the context of taxonomy. —Muke Tever 06:38, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

We should be very careful labeling Scientific name entries as "Latin". They are actually used in all modern languages by scientists (etc) but were never used in the ancient language Latin and are probably not used in the Latin currently spoken in the Vatican City for what that's worth. Somebody quite familiar with the ages of Latin should voice some recommendations on what to do in these cases. — Hippietrail 10:42, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ah, taxonomic Latin. Latin enough if you happen to be doing science in Latin, but many of the examples are pretty bad or clunky Latin on their own. ;p

Anyway. Some of these terms are just Noun + adjective (or Noun + genitive), like "felis domesticus" (domestic cat), which makes them ordinary Latin phrases. Others are Noun + noun though, like "Panthera leo" (panther lion) which is more unusual. In my PDF of Linnaeus' Systema Naturae (1766) noun species appear to be capitalized, thus under the genus Felis are listed Leo (lion), Tigris (tiger), Onca (jaguar), Pardalis (ocelot), Pardus (leopard), Catus (cat), and Lynx. The adjective ones seem to be lowercase, thus under the genus Canis beside Lupus (wolf), Hyaena, Vulpes (fox), etc., stand familiaris (familiar), aureus (golden), mexicanus (Mexican). As best I can judge, constructs like "Canis aureus" are analogous to saying "golden jackal" in English—ordinarily you can get by with just "jackal" (or, apud Linnaeum, "canis"), but the former are more specific/technical/etc.

Either way, I would let such things stand, though mark it as a technical term of taxonomy, not just zoology (which is a label that gets overused, IMO; in webster 1913 even 'dog' is marked as 'zool.'). —Muke Tever 18:42, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Muke. I think you're right. We'll go with just "==Latin==" as the language and "(taxonomy)" or "(taxonomic)" before the definitions since as you say they are not idiomatic Latin phrases and many words such as mexicanus were never used by native Latin speakers. — Hippietrail 02:40, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Gender

I've moved this from Felis domesticus since Felis is feminine, and the adjective should agree in gender. See http://www.iczn.org/iczn/index.jsp?article=30&nfv=true at 30.1.1. There remains, nevertheless, the problem that authorities have not been consistent on this matter. Eclecticology 03:37, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Incidentally — that same source [very interesting!] says "If the spelling of a scientific name, or of the final component word of a compound name [Art. 31.1], is the same as a Greek or Latin word, that name or that component is deemed to be a word in the relevant language unless the author states otherwise when making the name available." [1] which should help with the language problem for many of the entries... "Felis domestica" then would be unproblematically [New] Latin (though if it became a common noun in many languages, with pronunciations or figurative uses and whatnot, you would have a similar international-word situation to what you have with, say, modem). —Muke Tever 02:20, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)