Talk:Agave americana var. franzosinii

Wrong spelling of the name

The Taxon is called Agave americana var. franzosini (with one i at the end). See the plant database POWO (Kew). Alfred Neubert (talk) 07:11, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

@Alfred Neubert: it seems to be a somewhat interesting case. The original publication is online here (about 2/3 way down the second column) where it appears as "A. americana var. Franzosini". The capital letter at that time usually implies that it was named after a person. Now "Franzosini" is apparently a possible surname of Italian origin, albeit not common given the few instances a Google search finds. In German, "Französin" means "French woman", but if this were the origin, it's not clear why the "ö" wouldn't be retained or mapped to "oe", and anyway, where did the "i" come from? There have been attempts to 'correct' the original to franzosinii, implying an underlying Latinization "Franzosinius" which would have to refer to male person whose surname had the root "Franzosin". But IPNI takes the view here that, as there is no etymology given, the epithet should be left as published. So I'm inclined to go with the single "i" at the end as per IPNI. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:26, 6 October 2024 (UTC)