Creating Latin name for dragonfly family Anax/Aeshna

[Phyrebrat]

Hi all,

I need to create a dragonfly which loosely follows the Family Aeshnidae characterstics except it lays its eggs in the lungs of (usually) dead or dying water mammals (Europe and USA).

I've tentatively come up with Anax pulmonem as a fake name but I'd rather have something accurate as pulmonem (lung) is not perhaps as specific as a scientific name would be for such an organism.

I know there are some latin experts here and I'd also like to hear from experts in arthropods who might have a good word/name, which I can then convert to Latin.

Hark.... Quis est iste qui venit?

pH

 

[CTRandall]

Some scientific names are quite imaginative in their derivations, drawing on mythology or popular culture. Perhaps you could draw on the water mammals aspect and name it after a kelpie or lamprey (neither is exactly right but kind of evocative of what your dragonfly does). Or maybe the scientist who discovered it named it after someone/thing--a politician, ex-partner, rock group, choreographer , whatever--s/he really doesn't like.

 

[tinkerdan]

pulmonis vitamortem

A conflation of life and death or life from death along with the lung thing.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Thanks guys

Anax will be the first name, I just need one for the second. Was thinking something perhaps compound; ovi-something, ovipulmonem maybe?

ETA: sorry, CTR, I should've said this is set in 1865 London

 

[Juliana]

Second names can be up to whatever the scientist recording the creature wants. Can be 'invented' Latin! My biologist researcher friend, who specializes in spiders, registered four new spiders last year and named them all after rock/metal stars: Extraordinarius andrematosi, Extraordinarius brucedickinsoni, Extraordinarius klausmeinei and Extraordinarius rickalleni! Yes this is real published work and accepted scientific naming procedure. So have some fun with them, if you want.

EDIT to add link: New spider species named after members of Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Def Leppard and Angra

 

[Phyrebrat]

I have more Latin questions!!!

In my story is a strange door knocker which is of a cadaverous hand clutching a dragonfly and in the brass roundel is a Latin phrase.

My character translates this as “Knock, lest thou awaken the mother”

Bearing in mind I’m not sure if Latin uses constructions such as thou or lest, how might this be written?

My story is set in 1865

 

[Matteo]

Some scientific names are quite imaginative in their derivations, drawing on mythology or popular culture. [...]

Indeed - so it could be Anax kanealienis.

As for the doorknocker, someone is bound to correct whatever Latin you come up with...People called Romanes they go the house? so why not have the character simply "roughly translate" and not spell out the actual Latin. Or cheat; write the Latin as best you can, and have the character criticise the poor Latin and assume it was trying to say "Knock lest thou awaken the mother".

And wouldn't knocking wake up the mother?

 

[Pyan]

Ictus leniter, noli excitare matrem suam ?

 

[hitmouse]

The thing about Linnean classification is that it uses latin in only a fairly token sense. Peoples names, words from other languages, and in- jokes are quite common. There is a family of protists called the Stramenopiles, because they reminded the person classifying them of the straw man from the Wizard of Oz. The same zoologist named another protist Cafeteria. Because he was sitting in a cafeteria at a loss for a name to use.