Trochilus
TROH-kih-lus
Genus
The little spinning one — evoking swiftness, small size, and the wheel-like whirring of wings; fitting perfectly for a hummingbird
Literally: The small running bird; the pulley-bird
| Part | Meaning | Language | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| trochil- | A pulley; a very small bird | Greek (trochil) | From Greek trokhílos (τροχίλος); itself derived from troch- (wheel), evoking rapid spinning or running movement; used by ancient writers (Herodotus, Aristotle) for a small bird said to pick food from crocodile teeth, and for the wren |
| -us | Nominative singular masculine ending | Latin | Standard Latinization of the Greek nominative -os; fixes grammatical gender as masculine |
Trochilus is a single-word genus name: a Latinized Greek noun standing alone, masculine nominative singular. Linnaeus (1758) adopted the ancient Greek word trochílos wholesale, adding only the Latin -us ending. There is no species epithet in this submission. As a genus name it functions as a substantive noun in apposition to any species epithet that would follow it.
Pronunciation
- TROH-kih-lus Antepenult stress: the penult vowel (i) is short and followed by only one consonant (l), so the penult is light; stress therefore falls on the antepenult (Tro-). The antepenult vowel o is short (followed by a single consonant, then a single vowel i, not two vowels). ch is pronounced as hard k by rule.
Other readings
Deeper split: troch- (Greek, 'a wheel') + -il- (Greek formative/diminutive suffix) + -us (Latin nominative), yielding 'little wheel' or 'little spinning thing' — etymologically informative and consistent with the wheel-root, but the dictionary treats trochil as its own unified entry and this split is therefore secondary.
The root trochil is confirmed in the dictionary with the exact meaning 'a pulley; a very small bird', making this one of the clearest single-root genus names in ornithology. The deeper etymon troch- ('a wheel') is also in the dictionary; the -il- element is a Greek formative that produced the noun trokhílos independently. Linnaeus placed hummingbirds in Trochilus (1758); the genus has since been split and restricted, but the name survives for the Vervain Hummingbird (Trochilus polytmus group). Ancient sources (Herodotus 2.68; Aristotle HA 612a20) used trokhílos for the Egyptian plover or wren thought to clean crocodile teeth — the same word was thus applied to very different small birds across history.