Is there any kind of user-friendly guide to pronouncing and understanding Latin names of critters? It’s always been such a mystery to me even though I can kind of suss out the meanings (rarely). Or is it something that’s just passed down orally from teacher to student?
I rely on two fairly old books:
Dictionary of Word Roots and Combining Forms, Donald J Borror (1960, Mayfield Publishing, Palo Alto) gives greek and latin roots for biological terms and scientific names. It does not cover pronunciation extensively, but has a brief guide to pronunciation rules for scientific names.
The Penguin Dictionary of Botany, Stephen Blackmore and Elizabeth Tootill (eds.) (1984, Penguin Books Ltd., England) (Later updated as the Penguin Dictionary of Plant Sciences). Specific to botany, but an extensive dictionary of scientific terms and taxonomy; no pronunciation.
Both are out of print, but seem to be available used online or as PDFs (not sure of the legality of that).
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Scientific names are based on Latin and (Ancient) Greek.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/129068-Chrysocoma-coma-aurea is twice golden. First chrys in Greek, then aurea in Latin.
Botanese is Esperanto for scientists, based on 2 dead languages. Who cares how you pronounce it - so long as you can make yourself understood.
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We don’t have recordings of how Latin and Ancient Greek were spoken by the original speakers. An English speaker and a Spanish speaker will pronounce scientific names somewhat differently. We still understand each other.
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At least from how it’s been discussed on the forum, pronounce them with confidence and your peers will hopefully understand?
For plants, specifically, these two are good resources, the second is especially helpful for decoding what they mean:
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There is no “correct” way to pronounce Neo-Latin binomials and their pronunciation often varies wildly, even at the same institution.
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William T. Stearn’s “Botanical Latin” has a brief section on current approach to pronouncing Latin.
Here is a link to how an American and European pronounce names of mushrooms.
https://www.scmsfungi.org/?page_id=154
If you have a specialty see if there is a local group, join.
The consensus I hear is “just don’t butcher it.”
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To add to the points above, species names can incorporate words and names from any language. This means that there are even letters used that did not exist at the time Latin was spoken. For example the genus Wijayarana. Latin did not have the letters W and J — and Ancient Greek was of course written in a different script altogether.
“Correct” pronunciation also gets complicated due to this. For example take the famously short Yi qi. The epithet is Chinese, but written in the Pinyin system, where the letter “q” makes a sound that sounds like “ch” in English. Furthermore, the tones of the words are not written in the epithet since Latin names don’t use diacritics, so it is not even a complete Pinyin transcription. Although I do think it’s worthwhile to respect and try to learn the intended “proper” pronunciations, noone should be expected to know how to properly tell apart and pronounce every single language. So just take your best crack at it. I’ve heard at least 4 different pronunciations of Coelogyne.
As for the meanings of some Greek and Latin roots, here is a handy document:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250222153116/https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~jacks/Etymology.pdf
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This is sort of correct. While there may technically not be a “correct” way of pronouncing dead languages, there is usually a community consensus. But you just need to talk to people to find out sometimes.
One thing I’ve found that people pronounce differently from how I’d guess is that the emphasis sometimes falls on the antepenultimate syllable when I would have put it on the penultimate.
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I sometimes wonder at the (possibly) humorous mindset of the person who got naming rights. My personal favorite is a tiny arctic shrub known locally as Bearberry. The scientific name is Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, which translates as bear-berry berry-bear. First Greek, then Latin. It’s also known as kinnikinnik which is an indigenous name.
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By far I find my favorite scoping reference (although not-so recent) on how to technically interpret, understand, and say Latin terms/names in regards to biological use:
A Source Book Of Biological Names And Terms, EC Jaeger (1955)
There is a poor upload of it that is at least legible. It is a better read in person.
https://ia802905.us.archive.org/1/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.547395/2015.547395.A-source_text.pdf
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My first job after college was assisting two men who had been working together for decades on birds in the genus Aphelocoma. They each had their own, very different, pronunciation of this, and neither seemed to notice or care.
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after a too long day at the taxonomy coalface
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Love that one.
I appreciate the creative taxonomists, be their creativity a product of whimsy, boredom or insanity! I always thought Kearfott’s moths were an insanity plea: E. bobana, E. cocana, E. fofana, E. hohana, or if you find yourself in another genus, boxcana, coxcana, baracana, caracana, oh my!
https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/epiblema-moth-trifecta/
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The main rule is you should never correct anyone’s pronunciation.
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There are some dragonfly genera and maybe species epithets named by one 19th century odonatist that seem to have no meaning in Latin or Greek but perhaps some meaning in that person’s head.
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The way you pronounce Latin names depends on the context: when in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Personally, I only very rarely use these names in conversation, so I mostly just suit myself. Scientific names are really just opaque labels, like passwords. The syntax is what matters most - the “meaning” may or may not be completely arbitrary, depending on the whim of the author. Many reference works have separate indexes for the scientific names, which is perhaps telling. They aren’t really part of any spoken language, dead or otherwise.
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Of course, this instantly brought back memories of Shirley Ellis’ song “The Name Game” (referenced in your stub) because I’m a Boomer. 
Kearfott must have been a fan.
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The modern Romans, or the ancient Romans?
I pronounce them as I pronounce Latin, as long as they are from Latin (and in many cases its descendants) or Greek. My pronunciation is closer to classical than to ecclesiastical, but I often say /v/ instead of /w/ and almost always /θ/ instead of /th/. If a name is from Barbarian, though, I normally pronounce the Barbarian part in Barbarian, e.g. Winteraceae is the English word “winter” followed by /'a:.ke.ae/.
One oddity of pronunciation is Kalanchoe, pronounced /ka.'laŋ.xo.e:/ as one normally pronounces Latin loans from Greek. In Greek it’s Καλαγχόη, which I say /ka.laŋ.'xo.i:/. The name, though, is actually from Chinese, and “choe” is the same as the second word in “bok choy”.
Latin and Greek have different rules for the accented syllable (one example above). “Anthropus” and “pithecus” are stressed on the first syllable in Greek, but the second syllable in Latin, because the vowel is long, making the syllable heavy.
Vowel length is distinctive. Populus has the first vowel long; if it’s short, it means “people”. “Notus/noto” means “back” if the first ‘o’ is long (as in Camponotus “curved back”), but “south” if it’s short (as in Notornis “south bird”; this is obsolete, can you think of a better example?).
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Wonderful book.
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