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