Disputatio:Meles (genus)

Nomen[fontem recensere]

Pantocrator: "Meles means badger. Taxidea taxus is a badger; where else would you put it?"—Yes, Meles means 'badger', but not all badgers are Meles. (It's the all-squares-are-rectangles-but-not-all-rectangles-are-squares thing.) More precisely, Meles would appear to mean 'a member of (only) one of the three subfamilies of weasels that in English are called badger.' IacobusAmor 13:53, 7 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since it has no classical Latin name (unless Saint Brendan gave it one?) you would surely put it at Taxidea taxus, as I have now done. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:02, 7 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Surely, and obviously! IacobusAmor 14:19, 7 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the absence of any contrary evidence I think we should assume that the Latin meles is equivalent to the English 'badger'; and surely someone searching for 'meles' should see a list of all the animals that can be called by that name, which is the case now.

It is not unlikely, though, there is a 18c. or 19c. Latin source mentioning Taxidea taxus, which should make it clear whether meles is used to refer to it (It probably is.). Pantocrator 02:24, 8 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It may be. If such a source is found, we should take it into account; meanwhile, what you've added at Meles is useful. But it would be Anglocentric, and also counter to the mass of evidence on ethnobotany and ethnozoology, to assume that a Latin name for an animal or plant has the same semantic range as an English one. Why should that be the case? Very often it isn't. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:40, 8 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

With meles, it isn't. We have no warrant to assume "that the Latin meles is equivalent to the English 'badger'." (Keyword: equivalent; the semantic ranges differ widely.) As written above, an animal of genus Meles is "a member of (only) one of the three subfamilies of weasels that in English are called badger." IacobusAmor 13:47, 8 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On Vicipaedia we are really lucky that Latin is the official language for scientific names of species. Whether we should prefer these scientific names as our titles, where there happens to be a choice, hasn't been fully decided (if I remember correctly), but at any rate we can always appeal to them to ensure precision. If someone wants to write an article about what English speakers call the American badger, or any other animal or plant named in any language, we know we will always have at least one precise Latin name for it -- the currently valid scientific name. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:40, 8 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]