{"id":59471,"date":"2023-06-30T14:15:51","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T19:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=59471"},"modified":"2023-06-30T14:16:46","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T19:16:46","slug":"the-spiny-terminological-conundrum-of-ekhidna-and-ekhinos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=59471","title":{"rendered":"The spiny terminological conundrum of ekhidna and ekhinos"},"content":{"rendered":"

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[This is a guest post by Stewart Nicol]<\/p>\n

Greek particles<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u00a0am a zoologist and comparative physiologist who has worked extensively on the monotremes, the platypus and the echidna. I have been putting together some notes on the naming of the these animals. After originally being placed in the genus Myrmecophaga with the other, totally unrelated, anteaters, the echidna was given the specific name\u00a0Myrmecophaga aculeata<\/em>\u00a0(prickly anteater) by George Shaw in 1792. \u00a0It was named\u00a0Echidna histrix<\/em> by Georges Cuvier, misspelling Hystrix (Greek for porcupine). In 1811 Johann Illiger published an overhaul of the Linnaean system and replaced Cuvier\u2019s genus name Echidna <\/em>with Tachylossus <\/em>(fast tongue) making the full binomial Tachyglossus aculeatus<\/em>. The Genus name\u00a0Echidna<\/em> would have had priority but it had previously been applied to a genus of Moray eels, so the echidna became\u00a0Tachyglossus aculeatus,\u00a0<\/em>but popularly known as the echidna.\u00a0<\/em>Cuvier doesn\u2019t say why he used the name echidna, but the general assumption is that it alludes to a monster in Greek mythology , \u1f14\u03c7\u03b9\u03b4\u03bd\u03b1 or ekhidna<\/em>, half woman (mammal) and half snake (reptile), because the echidna was believed to combine characteristics of reptiles and mammals. Unfortunately, the word ekhidna<\/em> is very similar to the ekhinos<\/em> (\u1f10\u03c7\u1fd6\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2) which is the Ancient Greek word for hedgehog, and appears in the names echinoderm<\/em> and echinacea<\/em> because they have spines, giving rise to the misapprehension that the name echidna<\/em> means spiny.<\/p>\n

This is not what my query is about though.\u00a0In 1876 another type of echidna, now known as the long-beaked echidna, was described from skulls collected in New Guinea. It was larger but was clearly a type of echidna, and initially given the name\u00a0Tachyglossus bruijnii\u00a0<\/em>after A. A. Bruijn, a Dutch merchant and natural historian, who donated the first skull to the Museo Civicio de Storia Naturale Giacomo Doria at Genoa. The next year, the American taxonomist Theodore Gill, by all accounts a scholarly man but a boring lecturer, recognising that it was markedly different from\u00a0Tachyglossus<\/em>, placed it into a new genus, writing \u201cthe newly discovered form may therefore be appropriately contrasted under the name\u00a0Zaglossus<\/em>\u00a0(Za, augmentative particle, and glossus, tongue)\u00a0Bruinjii,\u00a0<\/em>with the previously known\u00a0Tachyglossus hystrix\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Tachyglossus setosus.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

My question is then, what meaning is this name intended to convey?<\/p>\n

Selected readings<\/strong><\/p>\n