[quote=angsthasen post_id=14180 time=1650969049 user_id=866]
Carla Hurt of [url=https://foundinantiquity.com/about/]Found in Antiquity[/url], who cautions that she is not really an expert on historical linguistics and her opinion should thus be taken with a grain of salt, adds:
[quote]I think the genus name cocos is a weird nominative formed from Portuguese "coco" with an -s attached (maybe a third declension, but what would the stem be?), and the feminine nucifera is probably agreeing with it in feminine because "nux" is feminine and the idea follows that a nut called "cocos" should be feminine too (Kinda like how trees like ulmus and cypressus are feminine despite their declension because arbor is feminine) but yeah, cocos is whole heap less easy to use in a Latin sentence than nux Indica[/quote]
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Thanks for your response (it really helped me to think through!) and sorry for this late reply, I had been busy lately. (and sorry for this hasty bad English writing!)
It looks like the name "cocos nucifera" is a set scientific Latin name by "International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants" (ICN), so I would use this name for now until I found regular common Latin name for coconut.
I also reviewed some ingredients of some products written in Neo Latin, I realized that they don't really use preposition as "ex" or "de", instead, it looks like they tend to use genitives forms for a descliption.
ex.
oleum rosae (rose oil)
oleum arganiae (argan oil)
Oleum Perseae Americanae (avocado oil)
Speaking of stem of "cocos", I'm still not sure yet. There are three possibities I can think of;
- cocos-is (like "urbs-is")
- cocos-cocotis (like "mons-montis")
- cocos-cocodis (like "pes-pedis")
No.1 and No.2 show up in Wiktionary page; https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocos_nucifera ("cocos-cocois" in the article, "cocos-cocotis" in the photo description, probably those are written by different people.) but not No.3.
Following these forms, Latin translation of "coconut oil" would be;
oleum cocois (nuciferae)
or
oleum cocotis (nuciferae)
So, Coconut sugar in Latin may be "saccharum cocois (nuciferae)" or "saccharum cocotis (nuciferae)".
Although, this is just a scientific name. If ancient romans had encounterd "coconut", I cannot imagine they had named coconut like "cocos nucifera". According to Wiktionary, "Olea" (olive oil) is from ἐλαία (elaía, “olive berry, olive tree” in ancient Greek),
"garum" is γάρον (gáron, “the fish whose intestines were originally used in the condiment's production”). So if they ever had a chance to encouter coconut (they might have known about it (??), since it looks like Egyptian Nubiaian did coconut oil trading around 350-600 AD ??) they might have named it after Greek origin name. According to a dictionary, modern Greek name for coconut is "Κοκοφοίνικας" (cocofoinicas) --- "foinicas" is palm tree). "Palm tree or Palm family" in Latin is "arcaceae", so it could have been "cocos arcaceae"?? ...just guessing ;) Maybe "cocos" is just fine...
[edit] Later I found that "arcaceae" is also a scientific name. It looks like "palm" in Latin is "palma" and there is also a word "palmarius" (of or pertaining to palm trees) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/palmarius#Latin
so coconut could be "cocos palmaria" or "cocos palmae" in regular use, so coconut sugar can be "saccharum- cocois/ cocotis- palmariae/palmae" ....just guessing!!