Etymology of Xema (1 Viewer)

[Jawaharlal Merlin Roth-Re]

Does anyone know the translation of Xema I know the genus name of the Sabine's gull is Xema

 

[Björn Bergenholtz]

See Jobling's Key to Scientific Names (here).

 

[mb1848]

Björn thank you for the link to the Key which is awesome. But I disagree a little with it about Xema. Leach did not call the bird Sabine's Xeme. He made a Latin genus name out of a bird John Ross gave the common/English name of Xeme. The book has a great color drawing "from nature" by Thomas Lewin of the bird painters Lewin family.
A Voyage of Discovery . The page after lvi.
Stephens in Shaw in 1825 called the bird Sabine's Xeme.
v.13:pt.1-2 (1825) - General zoology, or Systematic natural history - Biodiversity Heritage Library .
Lewin: LEWIN, Thomas (1774 - after 1840). An album of original bird drawings, drawn and painted from nature by Thomas Lewin. London: 1825-1831. .
Joseph Sabine called it Larus sabini without Xeme anywhere and Edward Sabine in the same volume does not mention Xeme.
v.12 (1818) - Transactions of the Linnean Society of London - Biodiversity Heritage Library .
v.12 (1818) - Transactions of the Linnean Society of London - Biodiversity Heritage Library .
Leach in a nature journal describes the bird as being between a gull and a tern and needing a new genus name without mentioning Xeme.
v. 13 (1819) - Annals of Philosophy. - Biodiversity Heritage Library .

 

[mb1848]

E. Sabine in Parry wrote two pages about his gull but no Xema nor Xeme.
A supplement to the appendix of Captain Parry's voyage for the discovery of a north-west passage, in the years 1819-20 : - Biodiversity Heritage Library .
Neville Wood in 1839 calls the Laughing Gull the Black-winged Xeme.
v.4 (1838-1839) - The Naturalist - Biodiversity Heritage Library .

 

[Björn Bergenholtz]

Björn thank you for the link to the Key which is awesome. But I disagree a little with it about Xema. Leach did not call the bird Sabine's Xeme. He made a Latin genus name out of a bird John Ross gave the common/English name of Xeme. ...

Mark, I'm not sure I understand what you're looking for, and "disagree a little with" ... ?

Today's (as well as yesterday's) Key [my blue]:

XEMA
(Laridae; Ϯ Sabine's Gull X. sabini) Coined from substantive name “Sabine’s Xeme” given to Sabine’s Gull by Leach 1819. Brookes 1828, has ...
[...]
"Genus XEMA. Leach (Xeme). THIS genus approaches to the GULL in the form of its beak, and to the TERN in having a furcate tail as well as in the general form and proportion of its legs; the only species hitherto discovered is the following: — Species XEMA SABINI, (Sabine's Xeme, non-descript) LARUS SABINI (Sabine)." (Leach 1819); "Xema Leach, in Ross' Voy. Disc., 1819, app. 2, p. lvii. Type, by monotypy, Larus sabini J. Sabine." (Peters, 1934, II, p. 326).
[...]

Isn't Appendix, No. II (Zoological Memoranda), in Ross's A Voyage of Discovery, (vol II, 1819) simply written by Dr Leach... ?



Please enlighten me (us) ...

/B

 

[l_raty]

Isn't Appendix, No. II (Zoological Memoranda), in Ross's A Voyage of Discovery, (vol II, 1819) simply written by Dr Leach... ?

I understand the introduction of this Appendix (pp. [xxxix] - xl; obviously written by John Ross himself) as telling us that it was written by John Edwards and Charles James Beverley ("For the following Article I am indebted to" etc.).
In the same text, Ross goes on explaining that he expected a report on natural history to be written by Edward Sabine, which Sabine did not do.
He then declares himself "incapable of filling up [this] blank" -- hence he can presumably not be assumed to have actively taken part in the writing of the text.
Last, he thanks Leach "for the kindness with which he revised and corrected the report".

If Edwards, Beverley & Leach are made joint-authors of the Appendix, the new names attributed to Leach alone in it have Leach alone as their author (which is conform to current usage). Beyond the names that are explicitly attributed, it may not be possible to determine who added this or that word to the text.

 

[mb1848]

The call of the question of our inquisitor is “Does anyone know the translation of Xema” He states Xema is the genus of Sabine’s Gull. So my tiny quibble of the Key is Leach separates the description of the new genus and then the mention of the species into two paragraphs. Leach Latinizes the word Xeme a non-scientific word for this new gull. Referring to Sabine’s Xene in the Key is putting the cart before the horse. My argument is a little circular since Leach only puts one species in the new genus, sabini thus Sabine’s Xene. But in the Octavo 8vo version of the Voyage of Discovery (still in 1819) Leach claims that Larus collaris by Schreibers was published first that in fact Sabine’s Xene was not a non-descript. It was described prior to 1818. He calls it Collared Xeme with not calling it non-descript.

Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum: Gaviœ and Tu . Page 182. I have not found the octavo version yet.

What I think Xeme in the OD of the new genus is referring to is the nice colored drawing of the Sabine’s Gull in the Ross book entitled Xeme. We know that in early 1819 Leach had not named the new genus leaving the genus name blank in his note to Thompson. Our inquisitor wants to know what Xema means we need to know what Xeme means. Edward Sabine states that a Greenlander on board who spoke English had never seen this bird, so it is unlikely an Inuit word for the bird. The only likely other Europeans that far north would be the Danes in southern Greenland. It does not seem like a Danish word. In 1819 in the Literary Gazette it says Ross’s crew found a new gull called Xeme. We know that neither Sabine brother ever used Xeme. John Ross claims that Edward Sabine the ships astronomer went collecting zoological things once and he was bad at it. Ross says his other crew who did actually collect the Xeme should get credit. His nephew James Clark Ross in a book on a second arctic voyage states he saw some Xemes on the second trip and that he and a couple others collected the Xemes on the first trip. Older Brother Joseph Sabine argued strongly that the new bird did not need a new genus. Opposite to Leach and modern taxonomists. In another publication Ross reiterates he did not know ornithology. So the likely source of Xeme as a common name is the two crew members responsible for the ornithology section? (Thanks Laurent) The first trip birds were killed in July so a word meaning winter visitor seems a weird word to choose?? There is a Journal f. Ornithologie note on this name but my German is bad but perhaps Greek for the bird’s red gape???

https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/102840#page/200/mode/1up / . 9 Der name Xema…

JC Ross comment:

Narrative Of A Second Voyage In Search Of A North-West Passage, And Of A Residence In The Arctic Regions During The Years 1829, 1830, 1831, 1832, 1833 . Page 58.

Literary Gazette 1819: The Literary Gazette / Page 244.

John Ross complaining on Sabine and mentioning Xema collaris:

An Explanation of Captain Sabine's Remarks on the Late Voyage of Discovery to Baffin's Bay . Page 23.

Ed Sabine’s position was that collaris was a MS name.
Does not xeme signify the tenth thing like the X legion in Latin? Or French?

 

[PScofield]

Whilst poor Latinisation seems most likely I found here that Xeme is an obscure 18th-century Spanish word that means "a woman's face". Could Ross's crew member have been Spanish?

 

[James Jobling]

Mark,
Thank you for reminding us of Chema Matschie & Cabanis, 1889, which I formerly treated as a variant of Xema. Upon reading the note in JfO I now regard Chema as a new name for Xema, considered barbarous by the authors, and have amended The Key as appropriate.
An eventful and prosperous 2022 to you and to all readers.
James

 

[l_raty]

But in the Octavo 8vo version of the Voyage of Discovery (still in 1819) Leach claims that Larus collaris by Schreibers was published first that in fact Sabine’s Xene was not a non-descript. It was described prior to 1818. He calls it Collared Xeme with not calling it non-descript.

Leach (here) wrote "I have since learnt that it has long been named Larus collaris in the Vienna Cabinet by Professor Schreibers". I don't think this means that it had been published -- just that Schreibers put this name on a specimen in the bird collection in Vienna (which Leach, like many other naturalists of his time, presumably regarded as having established the name, even in the absence of a publication).
In 1896, Saunders (here) claimed that the specimen in question was actually a Ross's Gull.

 

[paranoid numanoid]

I've had a quick look in a Latin Dictionary, a Greek dictionary, Newton's Dictionary of Birds (1896), Jobling's Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names (Oxford, 1991), Ovid's Metamorphoses, and J. A. Coleman's Dictionary of Mythology (2008) - and I can't see a meaning for that word or name.

If the original was a misprint or a scribble, Xenia (not Xema) was a maiden in Greek mythology (Coleman), but that's a long shot!

Tenth in French would I think normally be written dixieme and for short, xieme (with a grave accent on the first e in both cases!) Not sure about the "red gape" possibility?