Latinisation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

See Romanization (cultural) for the spread of Roman culture, law and language.

See Romanization for the representation of different writing systems in the Roman (Latin) alphabet..

In literature, latinisation is the practice of writing a name in a Latin style when writing in Latin so as to more closely emulate Latin authors, or to present a more impressive image. It is done by transforming a non-latin name into latin sounds (e.g. Geber for Jabir), by translating a name with a specific meaning into Latin (e.g. Venator for Cacciatore), or chosing a new name based on some attribute of the person (for example Noviomagus for Daniel Santbech, possibly from the Latin name for the town of Nijmegen).

In biology, species are given Latin or Greek binomial names when identified.

[edit] Notable Latinised Names

Some notable people who have used latinised names are:

• Geber (Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan)
• Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón)
• Avicenna (Ibn Sina Abū ‘Alī al-Husayn)
• Americus Vespucius (Amerigo Vespucci)
• Carolus Linnaeus, Carl Linnaeus