Day: December 15, 2015

-o, -onis is the native Latin declension. –on, -onis is not native Latin, so it is a morphological import from Greek.

So if it drops the -n, the word or name has been felt to be common or salient enough to be nativised as Latin. If it does not drop the -n, it is felt to be a Greek loanword, and is being spoken, as it were, with a Greek accent.

Apollo was a well established god in the Roman pantheon; in fact Wikipedia indicates he was already in Etruscan, as Apulu. So his name was assimilated into Latin, and dropped the -n. Orion was not a well established figure in Roman mythology; so his name stayed looking more like Greek.

Same story with famous vs not so famous Greeks. Plato, Crito, Zeno, but Euphorion, Solon, Philemon. And yes, it’s a very arbitrary dividing line, and accordingly you will find names with both endings: Euphorio or Euphorion, http://latinlexicon.org/definiti…

Of course, this only applies to the Greek –ōn, -ōnos declension (Latin -o, -onis); if it’s a different declension, Latin will stick with –on; eg Xenophon, -ontis.

1. Because Greek was the language of pioneers of STEM in antiquity.

2. Because Greek was the scientific language of the Roman Empire, and as such kept contributing to the naming of scientific concepts.

3. Because Latin (with the Greek layer of scientific vocabulary included) was the scientific language of the West from mediaeval times up until the 1800s.

4. Because even when Graeco-Latin stopped being the scientific language of the West, enough of the scientific vocabulary had already been contributed into Western languages by Graeco-Latin, that new terms kept drawing from that source—for consistency and associated prestige, well into the 20th century.

Nothing to do with Latin being dead (which, as a scientific language, it wasn’t), stable (Neo-Latin wasn’t), or concise (if you want concision, you go to Greek, which handles compounds a lot more flexibly than Latin). Nothing to do with Latin being secret: all intellectuals in Europe understood it, and it was the language of the church that persecuted Galileo, as well. (Yes, Latin kept the Unwashed Horde out of science. Contemporary English-based jargon does just as well.)

I lived in Irvine from 1999 to 2001, though it doesn’t sound like much has changed since. I was in my late 20s, an urbanite, with no car. It was horrid.

Irvine had just gotten Safest City in America status, with zero murders in the past year. After a few months there, I took to saying that it all made sense: people have to be alive before they can be killed.