Talk:Scaevola (plant)

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Latin[edit]

Can someone please sort through the Latin etymology? This doesn't make a whole lot of sense:

"The flowers are shaped as if they have been cut in half. Consequently, the generic name means "left-handed" in Latin."
What exactly is "consequently" about that? What does "left-handed" have to do with "cut in half"?

Farther down in the section "Etymology" it says:

""Scaevola" is Latin for little hand."
So what is it now, "left hand" or "little hand"? Can the article please make up its mind?

And does the name possibly have to do with the fact that the flower has five petals, resembling the fingers of a hand? --217.239.8.226 (talk) 23:39, 14 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Reliable sources say that the name comes from the Latin scaevus, an adjective meaning "to the left, left-handed", alluding to the one-sided shape of the flowers. I guess "left" because the five segments of the corolla point downwards rather than upwards, and "left" is associated with "sinister" things, "down" being bad compared to "up". But the last point is just speculation. The "-ola" part probably implies "small", but I haven't found a source for that yet. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:32, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that makes sense. Maybe we can have a Latin scholar approve of this explanation and then change the article accordingly: "little left hand"? Maybe someone can come up with a better wording that includes both "little" and "left". Just so the confusion of two seemingly totally different translations gets removed from the article. --217.239.5.236 (talk) 09:50, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing about "little" in the article now, because I have no source for it, only speculation. We can only include sourced information, and all that I have found is now in the article. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:57, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]