As a medieval Latinist, I have been reading your comments with interest. At the risk of complicating the discussion further, I would like to add that any classically trained Latinist would agree with everything you have said, as a third declension noun: Johannes (in the nominative) is Johannis in the genitive. However, medieval conventions which were followed well into the Renaissance also used 'Iohannis' in the nominative, and not rarely may I add. Hence, if you look at "A Latin-English Dictionary of St. Thomas Aquinas" (Deferrari, Roy J. A Latin-English Dictionary of St. Thomas Aquinas: Based on the Summa Theologica and Selected Passages of His Other Works. Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1960) p. 571, the entry, always put in bold and in the nominative, reads: "Ioannis and Ioannes."
Andrew T. Sulavik, ThD, MLIS
Metadata Cataloger
Howard University Libraries
500 Howard Place, NW
Washington, DC 20059
Phone: (202) 806-4291
FAX: (202) 806-7271
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________________________________________
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Adam L. Schiff [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 7:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] Latin question on personal name
On Wed, 16 May 2012, John C. DeSantis wrote:
> I too disagree with the suggestion to make cross references from
> non-nominative forms of names. This is not just a question of Latin--
> many language groups have inflected forms, including Slavic and
> Finno-Ugric. I would think it would suffice to record the inflected
> form as usage in the 670. Unlike some others, I would actually be
> horrified if I saw an authority record with an inflected form in a 400
> field; it would suggest to me that the cataloger was not familiar with
> the language of the item being cataloged.
>
> John DeSantis
> Dartmouth College
And that never happens, does it John? ;-) I fear that as we lose people
to retirement and cutbacks, the truth of the matter is that we will be in
the situation more and more of having generalist catalogers without the
broad spectrum of language skills that staff in large academic or public
libraries might once have had. To say nothing of smaller libraries that
might only have one or a few catalogers and might still have to catalog in
a multitude of languages. As we all lose staff, how long before no one
has the ability to catalog well in some languages or in a large number of
subjects/disciplines. The copy that I see regularly for natural sciences
is full of horrific subject analysis and ignorance or inadequacy.
Adam
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* Adam L. Schiff *
* Principal Cataloger *
* University of Washington Libraries *
* Box 352900 *
* Seattle, WA 98195-2900 *
* (206) 543-8409 *
* (206) 685-8782 fax *
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