Scientific names of organisms should not have a lang="la" attribute

[charlesroper]

MDN URL

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/i

What specific section or headline is this issue about?

Try it > taxonomic name example

What information was incorrect, unhelpful, or incomplete?

The example given for scientific names uses a lang="la" attribute.

<p><i lang="la">Musa</i> is one of two or three genera in the family <i lang="la">Musaceae</i>; it includes bananas and plantains.</p>

What did you expect to see?

While it is appropriate to use the <i> element for scientific names, the lang attribute is inappropriate because scientific names are not necessarily Latin. Many are derived from Latin, but many are also derived from Ancient Greek, and several other sources.

A complete binomial name is always treated grammatically as if it were a phrase in the Latin language (hence the common use of the term "Latin name" for a binomial name). However, the two parts of a binomial name can each be derived from a number of sources, of which Latin is only one.

So, scientific names are Latinised but they are not, strictly speaking, Latin.

Do you have any supporting links, references, or citations?

Wikipedia's manual of style states the following:

Although often derived from Latin or Ancient Greek, scientific names are never marked up with {{lang}} or related templates.

Nigel Chaffey, Senior Lecturer in Botany at Bath Spa University argues:

I acknowledge that in formulating such binomials the words must follow the rules of Latin grammar (and are therefore Latinised), which is emphasised by the words being given emphasis in italic script (as is also the case in UK and US English for unfamiliar Latin words and foreign phrases). But, I also recognise that the words used in those names are often derived from languages other than Latin, such as Greek, Japanese (e.g. the genera Tsuga, and Ginkgo), slang/conversational English (e.g. the genus Hebejeebie), etc. For the latter reason in particular I think that binomials are best described as scientific names rather than Latin names (and which nicely contrasts with the term ‘common names’ by which most plants are also known in everyday conversation).

(Source)

I personally worked for over 12 years in biodiversity informatics and although we colloquially refer to scientific names as Latin names, we all knew the correct generic term is scientific name or, more specifically, binomial name or binomials. These are what we would use in formal writing, reports, and in our specialised databases.

Do you have anything more you want to share?

Bearing all of the above in mind, if the intention of the lang="la" attribute is to express _Latinisation_ (the practice of rendering non-Latin names in a Latin style) in the more loose sense, then this attribute remains appropriate.

MDN metadata

Page report details

* Folder: `en-us/web/html/element/i` * MDN URL: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/i * GitHub URL: https://github.com/mdn/content/blob/main/files/en-us/web/html/element/i/index.md * Last commit: https://github.com/mdn/content/commit/3c925962d641d83660a3c28d3e9a0627a7996183 * Document last modified: 2023-01-19T12:03:58.000Z

[Josh-Cena]

I was about to suggest "Veni, vidi, vici" when I see it's already used in the live example below 😄 Maybe we can simply remove the Lang attribute.

[charlesroper]

Veni, vidi, vici is actually a Latin phrase though, so it's appropriate to use lang="la" there, right?

I think removing the lang attribute from scientific names would be best to avoid any confusion.

[Josh-Cena]

Yes, "Veni, vidi, vici" is Latin so the example below is appropriate.

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[wbamberg]

Thanks for filing! That sounds pretty convincing to me.

A bit of history: https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples/pull/2397 added lang, to replace the original class="latin" (https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples/pull/812/files) but I don't know why we did that in the first place. Just removing lang seems right here, and the example works just as well without it.

[NiedziolkaMichal]

@charlesroper That's a good thing to know. The lang attribute is used mostly to make search engines correctly identify the used language, but it can be also used by screen readers to adjust their pronunciation and accent. I have checked this with NVDA and JAWS, but I don't hear any difference between the usage of default lang and of la. Your arguments are compelling, so I will make a PR addressing this issue.