Disputatio:Insulae Vitienses - Vicipaedia

# Disputatio:Insulae Vitienses

### E Vicipaedia

## [recensere] Quid sit nomen Latinum

Could someone tell me how you'd pronounce "Fiiiis"? 71.130.12.129 07:15, 1 Martii 2006 (UTC)

  Something like "Fee-yee-ees". :) I couldn't find a proper declension system for Fiii, so I assumed it was a normal third-declension noun, with its genitive in "-is".

  (OK, maybe this page was a bit silly. Just wanted to make a point. Template:Oceania suggests the using "Insulae Fidzienses", so we'll probably want to move this article to a page like that, unless we want to give our readers a headache. :)) -Adamas 08:14, 1 Martii 2006 (UTC)

  Aaaaaaaaah. The obvious Latin term is Viti, -orum (n.pl.), 'the Feejees, the Fijis, Fiji'. For maybe 125 years or more, the standard scientific Latin adjective derived from this noun has been vitiensis. Run a search on that word via Google and you'll get 78,500 hits, giving zillions of species so named. Deriving the Latin term from the English term would compound the errors: (1) in the Fiji Islands, the biggest island is Viti Levu, and the islands are collectively known as Viti; (2) in Samoa, to the east, this became Fiti; (3) in Tonga, south of Samoa, that became pronounced something like Fitsi; (4) in the late eighteenth century, Captain Cook "discovered" Tonga and wrote the word down as Feejee, which (5) later English & American writers regularized as Fiji. Let's not further mispronounce an English mispronunciation of a Tongan mispronunciation of a Samoan mispronunciation! In view of the established Latin term, Insulae Vitienses, this Insulae Fidzienses is too novel & English-centered to be helpful.

  Similarly: Kiribati, -orum (n.pl.) because Kiribati is the local spelling of the word Gilberts (n.pl.). The Gilbert Islands form a substantial part of the nation of Kiribati. For an adjective, maybe Kiribatiensis or Kiribatianus would work. There's a long-established scientific Latin adjective gilbertensis (several species are so named), and that could be used for the Gilbert Islands (Insulae Gilbertenses), but not for the whole country, which includes the Line Islands (Insulae Lineae?) and the Phoenix Islands (Insulae Phoenicis?). IacobusAmor

Usor:IacobusAmor scripsit:

  In ipso loco = Viti ("Fiji, the Feejees, the Fijis"), ita recte Viti, -orum n.pl.; nomen adjectivum scientiae = vitiensis. Hoc Fidzi est horribilis barbaria, ex lingua Anglice nata.

Multo verisimilius ex more Eggeriano quam ex lingua Anglica. Sed Viti -orum attestaturne an ipse composuisti? Quidquid id est "Fiii" haud mihi videtur. --Iustinus 17:39, 15 Iulii 2006 (UTC)

  OK, here's what Egger says:
    Figi Fiji Islands Fidschi
    Insulae Fisienses, f.
  Egger has high prestidge among Neo-Latinists, but I rather like the idea of using a form based on Samoan Viti and the established Latin vitiensis. Of course Viti, -orum is rather speculative (though I admit I prefer Havaii -orum to the more established Hawaia). Of course using Insulae Vitienses avoids that problem.
  I see nothing wrong with using the English "mispronunciation", given that every non-Samoan language on the interwiki list does the same. But it goes without saying that Fiii is ridiculous (and, I hasten to add, that a noun paradigm in -i -iis is obscenely unlikely): even if we were settled on transcribing the English j as a Latin /j/, Latin is pretty much allergic to /ji/ combinations: cf. Hebrew names like Yis.h.aq (sorry, no unicode on this computer) and Yis´ra’el >Latin Isaac, Israel, not Ji-. So the expected form would then be Fii. But obviously this would be a silly way to do it.
  --Iustinus 03:39, 20 Iulii 2006 (UTC)

    I kind of liked a term based on "viti" especially, as noted, since it is attested in latin. I like Insula Vitienses the best of the above propositions.--Ioshus Rocchio 04:03, 20 Iulii 2006 (UTC)

      From Oceania, these species epithets are well attested:
        Fiji (Viti): vitiensis
        Gilbert Islands: gilbertensis
        Guadalcanal: guadalcanalensis
        Guam: guamensis
        Hawai'i: hawaiiensis
        Kaua'i: kauaiensis
        Kusiae (Kosrae): kosraensis
        Marquesas: marquesensis
        Maui: mauiensis
        New Guinea: novaguinensis
        Ni'ihau: niihauensis
        O'ahu: oahuensis
        Pacific: pacificus
        Palau (Belau): pelewensis
        Papua: papuensis
        Samoa: samoensis
        Santa Cruz: santacruzensis
        Solomon Islands: solomonensis
        Tahiti: taitiensis
        Tonga: tongensis
        Yap: yapensis
      There may well be others. The pattern is clear. IacobusAmor 01:16, 19 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

        I'm not sure what pattern you mean. Just adding -ensis? Well, alas, most biologists these days don't know Latin, and tend to just add -ensis willy-nilly. Some biological epithets are absolutely useful forms, others are atrociously bad. It's a mixed bag, unfortunately. --Iustinus 01:30, 19 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

## [recensere] Archipelagus

Archipelagus is a Medieval Latin term. If there is a good classical idiom (and there should be, given the Greek islands!) we may want to switch to that. Given that it is derived from pelagus it will have a very peculiar morphology:

- Nom: Archipelagus
- Acc: Archipelagus (!!)
- Gen: Archipelagi
- Dat: Archipelago
- Abl: Archipelago

Note that although it ends in -us -i, the word is neuter. Furthermore, it has no plural form. --Iustinus 01:00, 19 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

  Within Fiji, you've got the two big islands, and then you've got the Lau Archipelago (or Group) and the Yasawa Archipelago (or Group). I think the safest solution to the problem is to call the entirety the Insulae Vitienses (both of which terms are well attested!), and, possibly for short, Viti, -orum ("the Feejees"), though a problem with the short form is that the biggest of the Fijian Islands is, in Fijian, Viti Levu, and how do you make Levu agree with Viti? Just call it indeclinable? IacobusAmor 01:14, 19 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

    I have already moved the article to Insulae Vitienses. I just mention "Archipelago" because it was in the original article, declined incorrectly. I corrected it, but decided the word was a) weird b) tricky enough that I needed to discuss the complexities here (especially for fear that some well meaning editor will try to "fix" it).
    And since we have attestations in Latin for Vitiensis but not for Viti, I have avoided using it in the article. Viti -orum makes sense, but I would rather avoid such coinages when there is a possibility of finding a real attested form. I left Viti Levu in italics, treating it as a forreign word. For now that is probably the best policy. --Iustinus 01:30, 19 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

Receptum de "http://la.wikipedia.org../../../i/n/s/Disputatio%7EInsulae_Vitienses_20ec.html"

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