Disputatio:Mammalogia

De nomine

Some useful tidbits from the OED:

• "R. G. Mayne Expos. Lexicon Med. Sci. (1857) gives a Latin form mammalogia ‘a treatise on mammals’ s.v. mammalogicus."
• "Quots. 1839 and 1857 refer critically to the word's formation from a prefix of classical Latin origin and a suffix of ancient Greek origin, and perhaps also to its coalescence of the last syllable of mammal with the first of -ology ; mastology n., mastozoology n., mazology n., and therology n. were all proposed as substitutes in the 19th cent."
  • "1839 Penny Cycl. XIV. 352/2 Vicious however as the word is, the term mammalogy is in such general use by the zoologists of England and France, that it seems to be less objectionable to retain it."
  • "1857 R. G. Mayne Expos. Lexicon Med. Sci. (1860) Mammalogy, an imperfect term for a treatise or dissertation on, or a description of the Mammalia."

I don't think we're obliged to keep mammalogia in Latin if we can find a better attested form. See also, for what it's worth, modern Greek θηλαστικολογία. Lesgles (disputatio) 19:40, 5 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

LOL. I was thinking mammalogia (mammilogia) must be referring to the study of breasts, while the study of mammals would have been mammalologia. (mammal + o + logia). After all, the worship of idols is idololatria (idol + o + latria), not idolatria. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:51, 5 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I assumed that too at first! Mastologia and mazologia would indeed be proper Greek compounds for the "study of breasts," which I guess might be used metonymically for the study of mammals. Mastozoologia (breast-animal-study) makes it clearer. Therologia is beast-study, not very precise, but it does have a Latin quote in the OED:

Cf. 1620   J. H. Alsted Cursus Philosophici Encycl. I. vii. 572   Irrationale animal est, quod formâ brutâ est præditum, & dicitur bestia. Ejus doctrina dicitur Therologia.

Lesgles (disputatio) 22:44, 5 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

Granted the discomfort of "mammalogia", it is still better than these other alternatives because it is identifiably close to "Mammalia", which is the Linnaean taxonomic (taxinomic) term. Linnaean taxonomy defines what this study studies. "Therologia" is fairly close, but different, because it was defined before this classification had been worked out. It would simply be false to claim that therologia is the study of mammals.

But surely we can do better. One can see via Google that the terms "mammalologo" and "mammalologia" are used in Italian. Since we have no citations for "mammalogia" in Latin, we have to borrow from somewhere, so why not borrow the term we want from Italian? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:46, 6 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

I've just removed some useless things from the article, leaving very little :( It still says mammals are a kingdom, which they aren't. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:12, 6 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

Here is the record of all the Wikipedias that use Latin or Greek roots. Most have mammalogia, some with an o combining vowel. The Iberian languages use mastozoologia or mastologia. Therologia, or actually theriologia (from θηρίον instead of θήρ), is used in Russian and other Eastern European languages; the Russian article attributes this to Sergei Ognyov. Lesgles (disputatio) 19:49, 6 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

Mammalogia: bs Mamalogija cs Mammalogie cy Mamaleg da Mammalogi de Mammalogie diq Mammalociye en Mammalogy fi Mammalogia fr Mammalogie fy Mammalogy he ממלוגיה hu Mammalógia ia Mammalogia la Mammalogia nl Mammalogie no Mammalogi oc Mamalogia ro Mamalogie simple Mammalogy tl Mamalohiya tr Mammaloji

Mammologia: id Mamologi it Mammologia tet Mamolojia

Mastozoologia: es Mastozoología pt Mastozoologia

Mastologia: ca Mastologia

Theriologia: ba Териология be_x_old Тэрыялёгія be Тэрыялогія et Terioloogia gl Terioloxía ka თერიოლოგია kk Териология lt Teriologija mrj Териологи pl Teriologia ru Териология uk Теріологія