Re: Latin pronunciation puzzle


Colin Fine wrote:

> My query was as to why you said 'Atanborophi'. There is neither [f] nor
> [ph] in the original.
>
> I've just realised that perhaps you think the name is pronounced with
> [f]. It isn't.
>
> Colin

Attenborough. This could hardly be pronounced by a Roman. So let
us take the name apart. Atten - no necessity for a double 't' in Latin,
so let us make it Aten. The 'e' does not sound Latin to me, so I turn
it into a second 'a': Atan. Now for the other part -borough. Here
I thought of the regular ancient Greek ending -phos, and of the
Latin ending -phus, as in Josephus (Yosephus). Now put the two
parts together and you obtain Atanborophus. If you insist on a soft
ending, -borough -borow -borov, then the Latin version would be
-vius, -borovius, as in Flavius, Josephus Flavius, and the genetive
vould be -vii, Flavii. Now we get atanborovius atanborovii. An absurdly
long name. So a naturalist of Pliny's caliber would have had a closer
look at the name Attenborough, and might have come to the same
conclusion as I, namely that borough and burgh are variants of burg,
and so the name Attenborough must mean: the one from the burg of
Atten, which, in Latin, were simply given as the byname Atanus.
And if we consider the local Embra for Edinburgh, the analogous
short form of Attenborough would be Ambra, and a dweller of Atten
would get the byname Ambrus

Neither you, Colin Fine, Mons Finus, nor Peter T. Daniels, Petrus
Iorcus, Talking Rock (Peter's name in native American territory,
since Petrus means firm as rock, and as a linguist he is a talking
one), told us how to pronounce the name Zaglossus attenboroughi
correctly. Would you please do that now?

Thank you Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch

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