Ross Mayhew asks whether names of species as well as genera sometimes use
Greek endings. The answer is no: Species are normally Latin adjectives.
Some are nouns in apposition with the generic name; these can be in any
language and their endings do not change when they are reassigned to other
genera. Occasionally an author will misread the rules and name a new
species with Greek generic and specific names, and if it gets past the
editors and reviewers (not too difficult, these days), then the name is
published and we're stuck with it. But most specific names are in Latin,
especially the older ones, so you need only one dictionary to decipher
their meanings.
 
Generic names are nouns, and they can be in pure Greek, latinized Greek
(that's a Greek root plus a Latin ending), or pure Latin; or in fact they
can now be in any language or in no language, as long as they can be
written and pronounced in the Latin alphabet (plus j, k, and w, which the
Romans didn't use). Only a few are the original Greek or Latin names for
animals (Canis, Felis, Bos, Homo). Generic names can be descriptive names,
adjectives converted into nouns (analogous to English "the red one", for
instance), verbs converted into nouns (analogous to English "do-er", for
instance), anagrams, or meaningless combinations of letters that please the
author. They can also be names of people, usually converted to Latin and
given a feminine or even a diminutive ending ("Rosenbergia" instead of
"Rosenbergius"; examples of diminutives are "Rosenbergella",
"Rosenbergina", or even "Rosenberginella", all meaning "little Rosenberg"
to distinguish them from the original Rosenberg). Generic names can also be
made from geographic terms (Alabamina), names of mythological heros
(Polinices), names of ships (Velero), really anything an author fancies.
 
It usually is not a good idea to propose a new generic name consisting of a
single Latin or Greek word, for the simple reason that most of them have
already been used. It is more usual these days to combine two roots (both
Latin or both Greek) to form a new generic name, meaning, say, "red-top",
"spiny-skin", "cat-tail". It's in poor taste to add a prefix to a person's
name, particularly one that makes it sound odd ("Subrosenbergia", for
instance, means "like Rosenbergia" more or less, but would be insulting. No
offense intended, Gary!).
 
If you're naming a new genus or species, how can you tell if your new name
has been used before? Used names are no good in taxonomy! In practice,
there is no single, current catalog of animal names, though one exists for
plants (the Kew Index). Catalogs of animal names were begun in the
nineteenth century (e.g., Nomenclator Zoologicus), but they haven't been
updated in a long time. The Zoological Record is a bibliographic service
that attempts to keep track of every significant paper written in zoology,
and every new name. The recent parts can be searched on the Web now for a
fee. And catalogs of particular groups, such as bivalve genera, have also
been compiled, though they become out of date even before they are printed.
Using all these sources, you can usually figure out if a name has been used
before, but it may take a long afternoon in a research library.
 
Speaking of libraries, I forgot to list the taxonomic books for you people
and I will be out of town for a few days. My apologies!  But I'll get it
done as soon as I can.
 
Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama