Lophura
loff-YOOR-uh
Genus
crested tail — referring to the prominent crest and ornate tail feathers of these pheasants
Literally: crest-tail
| Part | Meaning | Language | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| loph- | a crest, tuft | Greek (loph, -i, -o, =us) | stem of lophos; the connecting vowel -o- is elided before the vowel-initial second root |
| -ur- | the tail | Greek (ur, =a, -o) | from Greek oura; initial vowel o- absorbed by elision, leaving -ur- as the combining root |
| -a | nominative singular feminine ending | standard New Latin genus-name termination; grammatical gender is feminine |
A purely Greek compound noun coined in New Latin. The root loph- (crest) joins directly to -ura (tail) with the connecting -o- dropped before the initial vowel of the second root (loph-o- + oura → Lophura). The final -a is the standard Latin/New Latin nominative singular feminine ending used for genus names. The name describes the bird in apposition — it IS a 'crested tail', i.e. an animal defined by its spectacular crest and tail together.
Pronunciation
- loff-YOOR-uh Penult stressed: the penult vowel is 'u', and most penults whose vowel is u are long (stress rule 4), so stress falls on the second syllable 'ur'.
Other readings
Theoretically lop- (Greek: scale, husk) + -ura (tail) could give 'scaly-tailed', but loph- (crest) is the far better fit for a pheasant genus and is the accepted derivation.
Lophura is a large genus of South and Southeast Asian pheasants (e.g. Silver Pheasant, L. nycthemera); the name highlights their conspicuous crests and long ornamental tails. The connecting vowel -o- of lopho- is regularly elided before a root beginning with a vowel (oura), a standard Greek compounding rule. The Latin ur (burn) entry in the dictionary is a homograph and is irrelevant here; the Greek ur/oura (tail) is the correct match.