It seems that the both words in Latin name for brown bear, ursus arctos originate from the Proto-Indo-European word a̯rtcos, "bear". Is this a tautology?
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3Ahahaha! What about the Latin name of the mountain gazelle, which is gazella gazella? Or delphinus delphis, or giraffa camelopardalis, or glis glis (fat dormouse), or gorilla gorilla, or uncia uncia (snow leopard)?– Yellow SkyCommented Sep 27, 2014 at 11:10
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Isn't this better suited for biology.stackexchange.com?– prash ♦Commented Sep 27, 2014 at 16:26
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1To make it even confuseder, arctic in English refers to the north polar regions, where the polar bear (U. maritimus, a different species) lives. Apparently polar bears and brown bears can interbreed, however, so they may be mere subspecies.– jlawlerCommented Sep 27, 2014 at 17:09
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@jlawler. arktos is the Greek word for bear. The Arctic region has its name from the fact that the North Star (Polaris) is in the constellation Ursa Minor (the little bear). It does not have its name from the fact that bears live there, a fact of which the Greeks and Romans would in any case have been ignorant.– fdbCommented Sep 27, 2014 at 17:30
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Indeed they didn't. But the name confusion continues anyway.– jlawlerCommented Sep 27, 2014 at 18:01
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2 Answers
It is not rare for the same Latin word to be used both for a genus and a species of the same genus. For example, canis canis, or the examples cited by Yellow Sky.
A more mainstream laryngealist reconstruction of the IE ancestor of Greek ἄρκτος and of Latin ursus would be *h2rtḱo-. I will not quibble about this, but do suggest that you put an asterisk before reconstructed forms.
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The term “canis canis” was used by Linnaeus (1753), but has since been abandoned. So yes, you are right.– fdbCommented Sep 29, 2014 at 14:59
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Linnaeus (1753) is Systema Plantarum - I cannot find Canis there. But anyway: according to the Code, zoological nomenclature started with "Aranei Svecici" (1757) and "Systema Naturae" (1758) and Linnaeus didn't list "Canis canis" in 1758, so we can say the name didn't exist as a taxonomic designation. Commented Sep 29, 2014 at 15:32
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Canis canis is in his Systema naturae, 1st ed., 1753, p. 12, genus in the 2nd column and species in the 4th. See here: biodiversitylibrary.org/item/15373#page/12/mode/1up– fdbCommented Sep 29, 2014 at 15:51
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(It was "Species Plantarum" - my typo). No, this is not an evidence of the usage of the binomen "Canis canis", since in earlier editions he didn't strictly follow binomial nomenclature. In that table it means "group Dog which includes the following species: 1. Dog itself, 2. Wolf etc". Commented Sep 29, 2014 at 16:33
It seems to be a terminological question, because the fact that ursus and arctos are cognates is beyond doubts I guess.
The only sphere where these two words come together is taxonomic nomenclature, so:
The correct name for scientific species names which have identical (or repeating) generic and specific names is tautonyms. They are allowed in zoological nomenclature and forbidden in botanical nomenclature.
The case of Ursus arctos is not even tautonymy in the strict meaning, i.e. no tautonomy-related articles of the Zoological (or even Botanical) Code would be applicable here. This could be called a "semantic" tautonymy and it is not covered by the Codes, meaning that it is no better/worse than any other non-tautonymous name.
