The nomenclatural codes say that scientific names have no diacritics. But Latin has been written with diacritics since it was carved in stone, using the apex to mark long vowels, equivalent to the modern macron, and later the acute accent to mark the stressed syllable after vowel length was lost.
I was just looking at Sabethes mosquitoes. I don’t recognize the name as meaning anything, and neither Wiktionary nor Wikipedia has the etymology, so I don’t know whether either of the first two vowels is long, and therefore, where the accent is. (-es is usually -ēs. Exceptions include neuter s-stem adjectives from Greek. Sabethes appears to be masculine.)
Here are some names with diacritics (if they should have them): Pōpulus is a poplar tree. Populus with short o means “people”. Canis is a dog. Cānīs is the dative or ablative plural of cānus, which means white or gray (of hair). Çariāma is a kind of South American bird. The cedilla indicates that the initial C is pronounced /s/; the ā is long to put the stress there, as Tupi doesn’t have phonemic vowel length. Camponōtus is a carpenter ant. It means “curve back” (καμπή + νῶτον), so the second o is long. When not- means “south”, the o is short (Greek νότος).
What are some other names, with vowel length or other diacritics indicated? What are some names you’re not sure how to pronounce because you don’t know which vowels are long?
The apices (and today macrons) have always been optional and were not used that commonly. In modern times (past two millenia) almost exclusively only in textbooks and dictionaries. There are exceptions, Rothmaler’s Exkursionsflora von Deutschland shows the stressed syllables.
I think it is extremely common to be unsure about the wovel length in scientific names. More so, beceause most current languages do not distinguish phonemic wovel length. Languages like Czech or Hungarian are just exceptions. The Ecclesiatical latin pronunciation, which is very common, does not distinguish wovel lengths either.
From your examples, I always hear “Populus” pronounced short even from people who are able to distinguish vowel length. They (and I as well) are just unaware it should be pronounced differently. I am sure I have many more wrong but I am also sure that speakers of most languages do not care at all because they native languages do not distinguish phonemic length.
I found a name that can be stressed either of two ways, by Latin rules. It’s Anabrus, the Mormon cricket. When br or other combinations of a stop and a liquid occur between vowels, the syllable can start between them or before them. So Anabrus can be stressed on the first or second syllable.
It’s from Greek άναβρος and means “not pretty”, so it’s the opposite of the jequirity, Abrus, whose beans are used for jewelry. But don’t make or eat jequirity bean soup, it’s poisonous.
In the Garden of Eden story, there is no indication that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was intended to represent any extant fruit. After all, what extant fruit has such powers? The popular portrayal of the forbidden fruit as an apple comes from a Latin play on words, as you described.
It indicates a long vowel: /ma:lus/. It’s not /maylus/, as no such diphthong occurs in Latin, though mays I pronounce /ma.ys/ as two syllables. (The genitive is maydis, which is the species name of something. I don’t know enough about Taíno to formulate rules for Latin borrowings from Taíno.)
Names ending in anthrōpus or pithēcus should be stressed on the penult. I hear them all the time stressed on the antepenult, which is where the stress is in Greek, but by Latin rules, it’s on the penult, since it has a long vowel.
Galēgeeska (a sengi) has two long e’s. The first is written with one e, as it’s from Greek which uses one letter η, but the second is written double because it’s from Somali, which writes long vowels double.
You can’t really write the distinction between short and long using any English “equivalent” as English does not distinguish phonemic length. There is always also a difference in quality in English and that is actually the main distinction.
Sometimes it seems like there might be a length distinction in English words like bit and beet, but there is always a quality distinction present (/bɪt/ vs. /biːt/) which is perceived as the main one even if one is phonetically short and the other long in most dialects.
In languages that do distinguish phonemic length there may actually be a change in quality between the long vs. short version, and it probably was even the case in Latin, e.g., īnfimus=/ˈin.fi.mus/=[ˈĩːfɪmʊs̠], but the speakers most often don’t even perceive the distinction, they just regard them as short vs. long based on the length of duration and not different based on [ɪ] vs. [i]. The same change also happens in the Czech language (/ˈlː.bit/=[ˈliː.bɪt]) and most speakers do not recognise that it even exist, they just hear the length difference.
So it definitely is not any English diphtong. It is just the change in the length of duration of the vowel (for the a in malus) and in the case of the i vowel specifically there is also a change in the quality.