Colinus
co-LY-nus
Genus
Colinus is the Latinized form of the Mexican (Nahuatl-derived) vernacular name for the bobwhite quail
Literally: The bobwhite (Mexican vernacular name, Latinized)
| Part | Meaning | Language | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colinus | The bobwhite | Mexican (=colinus) | Adopted whole into New Latin as a genus name; treated as a 2nd-declension masculine noun (nominative singular -us). The dictionary records the full form =colinus as a Mexican vernacular word. |
Colinus is a monomial genus name. It is a New Latin noun formed by borrowing the Mexican (Nahuatl-region) vernacular name colinus for the bobwhite quail and giving it the standard Latin 2nd-declension masculine nominative singular ending -us. Because the whole word is attested as a unit in the dictionary (=colinus), no further segmentation is required. Species epithets placed under this genus (e.g. Colinus virginianus) are adjectives or nouns that must agree with or stand alongside the masculine genus name.
Pronunciation
- co-LY-nus Penult stress: the penult vowel 'i' of the Latin suffix -īnus is long (Rule 4), so the penult syllable 'li' receives the stress. The long ī is pronounced as the English long-i sound ('eye').
Commonly: KOH-lih-nus (antepenult stress, with short i, heard in common English usage among birders)
Other readings
A secondary segmentation coli- (Greek, 'a woodpecker') + -inus (Latin suffix, 'resembling, belonging to') would yield 'resembling a woodpecker,' but this reading is almost certainly coincidental; the bobwhite is unrelated to woodpeckers and the direct Mexican vernacular entry is the named source.
A tertiary reading col- (Latin, 'to dwell') + -inus ('belonging to') = 'belonging to a dwelling / colonial' is also philologically possible but not supported by the taxonomic context.
The dictionary records =colinus as a Mexican word meaning 'the bobwhite,' confirming the genus name is a direct vernacular borrowing rather than a Greek or Latin compound. The genus Colinus (Bonaparte, 1838) contains the bobwhites (New World quails), the most familiar being C. virginianus, the Northern Bobwhite. OCR note: no typos detected in the source entry.