Common names for Mesozoic and Cenozoic mammals: In zoologists’ Israeli Hebrew, and in English

Abstract

From the 1860s to the 1970s and beyond, animal names in Hebrew have been modernised. Globally, members of the public have gained more exposure to variously mediated representations (e.g., on television) of animal taxa of which they would not have experience even at the zoo, and for example in popular culture (e.g., new fables children are read at neighbourhood libraries, e.g. in London) dinosaurs have become what exotic animals and dragons were in folklore in premodern societies. Global exposure to the Web has served well more serious engagement (though as a hobby) of a sector of the public with zoology (both neontology, i.e., extant animals, and palaeontology, i.e., fossils). Also increased sophistication among academic zoologists involves somewhat more acutely felt needs (also, up to point, among secondary teachers) to be able to make use of common names sometimes even when referring to superordinate fossil taxa, especially zoological orders, thus extending the modern vernacular lexicon beyond neontology also to palaeontology. One actually comes across English adaptations of scientific names of family or order names, as well as such compounds as beardogs, or “dog bear”, or “giraffe rhinos”, or then terms that sound more technical (e.g., amphicyonine and daphoenine beardogs). Tactics of neologisation are discussed, with a focus on zoologists’ Israeli Hebrew as being the target language. Among the other things, producing smooth and relatively more transparent terminology serves the need of writing in one’s own language referential scholarly prose for dealing with a status quaestionis in flux.