Abstract
IN the course of the interesting notice of Stille's “Die Schrumpfung der Erde” in NATURE of June 2, reference is made to” What G. K. Gilbert styled epeirogenic (now written epirogenetic)”. The latter termination is no doubt more correct, but the spelling of the second syllable involves a more debatable question. Some of us are by no means reconciled to the system of the Latinisation of Greek names, now widely followed, especially on the other side of the Atlantic. It is a distinct misfortune that Greek should reach the nomenclature of science by way of a language poorer in both vowel and consonantal sounds. To write “dinosaur” for “deinosaur” is to obscure the derivation of the word. So long as most of our scientific terms are derived from Greek, it is obviously desirable that they should be written in English in a form as closely similar as possible to the original, so that a student can look them up in a lexicon even if he knows but little more of the language than the letters.
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EVANS, J. Scientific Names of Greek Derivation. Nature 112, 9 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/112009d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/112009d0
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