You say dominula, I say dominulus

September 10, 2008 by myrmecos

Meet the European Paper Wasp, Polistes dominulus. Or is it Polistes dominula? Most biologists I know refer to this common Holarctic insect as P. dominulus, but I’ve just learned via Bugguide.net that the common spelling is a grammatical misunderstanding of the original latin:

Explanation of Names

Female ruler, lady, mistress:

From Latin dominus- “lord, ruler, master” (related English words: dominion, domain, dominate) + the diminutive suffix -ul- which adds the meaning “little”, and a feminine ending.

Until recently treated as an adjective describing the masculine noun “Polistes”, but now is recognized as a feminine noun standing on its own. The first requires the masculine form dominulus, while the second keeps the original feminine form dominula.

So it’s P. dominula. Damn taxonomists.

photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper

Posted in Insect Links, Taxonomy | Tagged entomology, nomenclature, polistes, wasps | 3 Comments

3 Responses

on September 10, 2008 at 4:10 pm James C. Trager

Yeah, I just learned about this one, too. Indeed, I should have caught it earlier. But let’s not curse the taxonomists, most of whom have a rather poor handle on Latin grammar, and themselves suffer from the interminable linguistic hegemony of the ancient Roman Empire! (Better than phylocode though, eh?)

Most Latin words ending in -ulus, -ulum, -ula are diminutive nouns, maybe even all of them in the classical language. There are a few exceptions though in taxonomic Latin, such as the specific epithet of Paratrechina parvula, a diminutive of a diminutive, if you will. Parvus means small, so parvulus means, roughly, itty-bitty!
on September 11, 2008 at 1:30 pm patterson clark

I once read a translation of “dominulus” as “builder of a small home in the city,” which accurately describes the paper wasps near me.
on September 11, 2008 at 1:41 pm Marc "Teleutotje" Van der Stappen

On page 311 of the determinationguide

Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification No.5 (February 2008) BUCK ET AL.
Identification Atlas of the Vespidae (Hymenoptera,
Aculeata) of the northeastern Nearctic region
MATTHIAS BUCK, STEPHEN A. MARSHALL and DAVID K.B. CHEUNG

you can find, at the start of the discussion of the wasp, the following comment:

74. Polistes dominula (Christ, 1791)
Figs B10.1, 3, 4, 44; C74.1–8.
NOMENCLATURAL NOTE. J.M. Carpenter (pers.
comm.) kindly pointed out to us that the correct
gender ending for this species is dominula.
“Dominula” is the diminutive form of the Latin
noun domina (= mistress) and therefore indeclinable
(the original combination is Vespa dominula
Christ).

The book, put on the internet in February 2008, you can find on the internet as html or as pdf on

http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/bsc/ejournal/ejournal.html

Very nice book by the way …..