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alt title(s): Dog Latin Sibilli, si ergo —
Fortibus es in ero.
Nobili, demis trux.
Si vats inem, causen dux.[1]
Mike: Lots of multi-syllabic non-words in this story?
Kevin: Yeah, see they simply took Latin ...and ruined it.
In a show rife with magic users or scientific terminology, Latin is the gear of choice. It's exotic-sounding, it has a word for almost everything, and it's fairly well known. With Latin by your side, you can spout off any string of awesomeness you want, and easily throw in a few less-than-Latin bits — want to name your New World Monkey "Callithrix dubyabush?" Go for it!
But what happens when you run out of Latin? Your spell or radioactive element has some attribute that you don't know how to name? Well, just make up some new Latin! It's easy: take an English word — any will do — drop any vowels from the end, and add "-us", "-icus", or "ium". If you're naming a town, use the extension "-opolis" (although the extension is actually Greek, not Latin. Real dog Latin would have you using the extension -ium or -ia). Ta-daa! Instant Latin! This use of Latin, as the trope name should indicate, is called "dog Latin". (Incidentally, the trope title is in fact real Latin...for "Latin dog." No, it doesn't make much sense.)
Greek is often used interchangeably with Latin for such purposes (as in the "-opolis" example above); few writers bother to make a distinction. In the last hundred years or so, few real scientists do either. Consequently, a large percentage of real life species names are exemplars of this trope. For example, the swordfish has the scientific name Xiphias gladius (literally sword in Greek, then Latin).
May be used in comedic versions of the Pretentious Latin Motto. Also comes in handy for Ominous Latin Chanting.
A subtrope of Gratuitous Foreign Language. Compare with Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe. Don't confuse it with Igpay Atinlay. May be used in Ominous Latin Chanting
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Many of the episode titles in Negima are in Latin-ish.
Comic Books
- Done for laughs in the Asterix series.
Film
- Monty Pythons Life Of Brian: "Biggus Dickus?"
- Parodied in the scene where a Roman centurion makes Brian painstakingly correct the grammar of his "Romans Go Home" graffiti. It is a perennial favorite among cool high school Latin teachers.
- The Big Bad in Enchanted makes all her magical incantations in something Latinesque.
- The mission scene in Beavis and Butt-Head Do America has background music whose text, the filmscore's composer admits in a DVD feature (and demonstrates in the manuscript score), runs: Scrotum agitato, Ignoramus, Genitilis longuis, Hemorrhidus burnum all day long.
- The Stoner Flick J-Men Forever has the motto of the
G-Men J-Men as "U Cannabis Smokem".
Literature
- Harry Potter contained several spells based on Latin ("Expelliarmus", "Wingardium Leviosa", etc.) Most of them sounded decent, but occasionally one more obvious would enter the mix, such as "Petrificus Totalus" — the Full Body Bind.
- The eponymous wizard in The Dresden Files straight up admits he's using quasi-Latin or pseudo-Latin, in so many words, with spells like "Fuego! Fuegoso! Pyrofuego!" for fire, "Forzare!" for force and "Ventas servitas" for wind. They're his two favourite standby spells. The Faux Latin words apparently are helpful foci for concentrating the energy that allows magic to happen. (Other wizards have been described as using Sumerian, Greek, and Egyptian-based spell invocations in the books, but the exact words are not given.)
- In this particular case, it's important that he not use proper Latin words, because the words of a spell become inextricably bound with the use of magic in a wizard's mind — and he would run the risk of accidentally casting spells when simply speaking Latin (which is the lingua franca of the wizarding community).
- Though he clearly doesn't spend much time actually speaking Latin. Correspondence course win?
- Harry's explanation is more intended to explain why he doesn't just use English, or at least that was the impression This Troper got.
- This troper laughed about fifteen minutes straight when she came upon Dresden's spell to light a roomful of candles: "Flickum bicus," a dog Latinization of the old "Flick a Bic" lighter jingle.
- This Spanish-speaking troper was displeased with Ventas servitas, being the most usually invoked spell, as this in Spanish sounds too close to ventas servidas ("served sales", probably as nonsensical in Spanish as it is in English, but conceivable as a concept nonetheless) to be comfortable with. Also, Spanish has grammatical gender besides number, and while venta (sale) is female, viento (wind) is male, which added to the dissonance.
- 'Served sales' is nonsensical, but Harry does specifcally mention that he uses nonsense... it doesn't really need to mean anything, it just has to help him focus what he wants to do.
- Finding a mysterious fossil of a never-before-seen organism, one of the protagonists of Ryk Spoor's Boundary names it Bemmius secordi. The secordi is for the Secord family, on whose land it was found. Only a few people catch on that the Bemmius is her covert reference to "Bug Eyed Monster", as she's convinced it's the fossil of an alien but which isn't something she dares state publicly.
- Averted in H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy, where the narration specifically discusses how the scientific nomenclature of The Future no longer requires Latin or Greek terminology (or, evidently, several other established rules), and the newly-discovered aboriginal life-form on the colony world is officially designated Fuzzy sapiens.
- The Discworld has Latatian, or "very bad doggy Latin", as Ankh-Morpork's former language; examples include the city's mottos (Quanti canicula ille in fenestra, or "How much is that
doggy small dog in the window," and Merus in pectum et in aquam, or "Pure in heart and water", for a city whose river you could skateboard across (especially in the summer)) and the Watch's motto (Fabricati Diem Pvnc, apparently an abbreviated form of a previous motto that also happens to be Canis Latinicus for "make my day, punk"). Occult uses of Canis Latinicus include the Tome Of Eldritch Lore Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, which translates as "The Book of Yellow Pages".
- The members of the Watch, of course, are all convinced it means "To Protect and Serve". Since at least one of them seems to be able to translate Latation quite well otherwise, it's possible they're just fooling themselves.
- It might be like the "real" meaning of Hogswatch. Not true, but it should be. And Vimes isn't entirely above sarcasm, which Colon and Nobbes don't seem the types to get.
- In Jingo, a character received an honorary degree from Unseen University entitled Doctorum Adamus cum Flabello Dulci. "Doctor of Sweet Fanny Adams", British slang for "nothing at all". Possibly a reference to Private Eye's honorary degrees (see below).
- The Ecksian version of Unseen University has Nullus Anxietas ("No Worries") written over the front gates.
- Nil Desperandum.
- Also "Nulli Sheilae sanguineae" : No bloody Sheilas.
- Who could forget Rincewind's "Stercus, stercus, stercus, moriturus sum"? (Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, I am about to die!)
- And the same character's "Moritori Nolumus Mori" (we who are about to die, don't want to)?
- And there's Albert's "Sodomi non sapiens" (buggered if I know...)
- Another Jingo example, Vimes comes upon the remains of a statue of General Tacticus (an ancient Morporkian war hero, better at conquering than Alexander the Great), the plinth of which bears the motto "Ab hoc possum videre domum tuum," "I can see your house from up here." (Both a boast and a threat.)
- Nanny Ogg translates her favorite Bawdy Song, for Casanunda's benefit, as "Il Porcupino Nil Sodomy Est".
- The motto of Lord Vetinari is "Sic non confectus, non reficiat" which is said to translate as "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
- Making Money says that he rules the city by the law of Quia ego sic dico, or "Because I say so."
- Quoting this stuff is, of course, a favorite past time of the Lawyers Guild and by extension, its head Mr Slant. Amusingly a lot of what he says sounds like compelete nonsense, like citing someone should be released from prison on the grounds of something that translates as "Smelling of violets and fish", but it always has actual precendence in Ankh-Morpork law.
- The poem "The Motor Bus" by A.D. Godley declines "motor bus" in every possible way as if it actually were a Latin noun phrase.
- Technically it is, you know.
- But bus is a contraction of "omnibus", which is dative plural already — the nominative singular would be "omnis".
- The Ciaphas Cain novel Caves of Ice takes place on the frozen planet of Simia Orichalchae (which roughly translates as "brass monkey", as in "cold enough to freeze the balls off..."). There's also a reference to the planet Nusquam Fundumentibus ("without an arse").
- And Duty Calls takes place on Periremunda ("lost world") and includes a plateau named Aceralbaterra, which translates as Maple White Land, the name of the plateau in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Bonus points because after being discovered by Acer Alba, Periremunda was rediscovered by "Magos Provocare," a name that could be rendered as "Professor Challenger."
- The first recorded use of "fuck" in the English language is a poem; it's Bowdlerized by making the last two lines Latinized as "Non sunt in celi/quia fuccant uuiuys of heli". Making this trope Older Than Steam.
Live Action TV
- In Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, the Ancient language is quasi-Latin — for instance, the Ancient term for "Stargates" is "Astria Porta". The in-universe explanation is that it is actually Latin's mother tongue, even though the Ancients on Earth supposedly died out by 3,000 BC — long before Latin began to form.
- It's a good idea to avoid thinking too hard about anything to do with linguistics on Stargate. Seriously.
- Or you could chalk it all up to 'The Ancients had an absurdly long lifespan'
- It is possible that this meant that Ancient was in fact Proto-Indo-European, which makes the time frame about right.
- Except that "Star Gate" in PIE would not be Astria Porta: The word for "stars" was probably "Sterh" or "Ster," and the word for "door" or "gate" was "dhwer" (the Latin "Porta" for "gate" was from the root "per-", about passing through something. It's better than the origin of the English "gate," which comes from a Germanic word for "anus" and ultimately PIE for "defecation").
- "Xander, do not speak Latin in front of the books."
- In the episode Get it Done, Willow begins a spell in Latin, but it isn't going well so she reverts to English: "Screw it! Mighty forces, I suck at Latin, okay? But that's not the issue! I'm the one in charge, and I'm telling you, open that portal now!"
- The Red Green Show, anyone? "Quando omni flunkus moritati" (when all else fails, play dead).
- One episode of music-centric Panel Game Never Mind The Buzzcocks lead to panellist Bill Bailey, on answering a question incorrectly, responding with "Quiz Poppius Trivialis". After which, Mark Lamarr re-responded "Buzzcockius No Pointata''.
- Power Rangers Mystic Force is surprisingly good about using actual Latin, Greek, and Welsh words (if not proper use of either grammar or Magic A Is Magic A to match), but a few stinkers got by, such as "Hilarium Shenolia".
- The Colbert Report gives us the motto for Stephen going to Iraq.
Veritasiness
- Speaking of Iraq, Generation Kill has a kinda mixed up one: "semper Gumby", "always flexible". This troper burst into tears of maniacal laughter at that one.
- Wizards of Waverly Place's many spells that are just normal phrases with Latin suffixes slapped on.
Tabletop Games
- The Imperium of Man in the Warhammer 40000 universe uses Dog Latin as a translation convention for High Gothic, an archaic language mainly used in formal settings. Some examples include the Adeptus Astartes (Space Marines), the Ecclesiarchy (priests), and Departmento Munitorum (Military command & logistics).
- Even worse is the fact that High Gothic was a real Germanic language...
- Place names show this too, along with what seems to be a healthy dose of gallows humour among the harried explorers and colonists who found themselves stuck on the nastier ones in ancient times. Examples include the ice worlds Simia Orichalchae and Nusquam Fundumentibus (respectively, Dog Latin for 'Brass Monkey' and 'Without Arses').
- Vampire: The Requiem features some odd Latin. "Lancea Sanctum"? "Ordo Dracul"? You can kind of tell they stuck random inflections (or no inflections, as the case may be) to words...
- Requiem in Rome puts a small Ret Con on the former - in the Roman Empire, the Lancea Sanctum were Lancea et Sanctum, but time and non-Latin-speaking vampires eventually warped the words.
- "Lancea et Sanctum" is even stranger, as the they're supposed to be the the order of Longinus's sacred spear - that is, his lancea sancta. Lancea et Sanctum - literally "the lance/spear and the holy thing" - is just odd.
Video Games
- The Troggles in the MECC's Munchers games have the genus name 'Trogglus' and species names such as 'smarticus'.
- Escape from Monkey Island has a bit of gratuitous Latin (the inscription on one pirate statue reads something like "Where is the booty?") This frustrates the main character, who eventually mutters something about wishing he had bought the Latin for Scummies book.
- Kingdom Of Loathing has some fun with this. During The Quest for the Holy Mac Guffin, you get a number of clues for various obstacles, some of which follow this trope. Such as:
NOS NON NECESSITAS NULLAS AQUIA PERMISSIUM MATRISFORNICATIO EXURO
"We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn."
- The Sims 2: University has a cowplant with the taxonomic label of Laganaphyllis simnovorii. No taurus or bovinae in sight, oddly enough.
- The Apartment Life expansion pack (re-)introduces magic into the series. The spells are latin-sounding things like "Appello Simae", which summons other sims.
- The 1989 release Keef the Thief featured such spells as "Flickus Bickus" and "Bandus Aidus."
- In the Baldur's Gate series, whenever a spell is cast, the caster will chant a distinctive, seemingly nonsensical, phrase that varies depending on the type of spell. Only, they're actually saying a combination of 3 Latin words that are somewhat related to the type of magic being cast. Saying Incertus, pulcher, imperior, which roughly translates to: "unpredictable, beautiful, power", fits quite well when you're about to sling a fireball into a horde of enemies.
- Neverwinter Nights plays it more straight, spellcasters mutter one of three or four different phrases that don't appear to mean anything. Casting Bull's Strength and Meteor Storm you might well get the same chant both times. (Do correct me if I'm wrong.) Neverwinter Nights 2 uses the same exact incantation soundbites.
- In Neverwinter Nights, the Latinoid phrases are connected to schools of magic — so Bull's Strength (transmutation) and Meteor Storm (evocation) won't have the same phrase, but Fireball and Meteor Storm will.
- The human faction in Sword Of The Stars has two mottos. Having barely survived an alien invasion: "Per Ardua Ad Astra," Through hardship, to the stars (a motto adopted in Real Life by the RAF and others). Having built a fleet of warships and re-encountered the aliens that attacked Earth: "Repensum Est Canicula," Payback is a bitch!
- In the Halo universe, all the Covenant species, in addition to having a nickname (e.g., "Elites") and a formal name ("Sangheili"), also have a faux-Latin scientific name ("Macto cognatus"). You can read all the names and the meanings behind them in this forum post.
- The names of the skills in Donkey Kong 64 have dog-Latin translations.
- Blaz Blue mixes actual Latin with Latin Sounding Gibberish and oddly spelled words that might be Latin to provide us with "Nox Nyctores" (a type of weapons system) and "Arcus Diabolus Bolverk" (a variant of said weapons system). By contrast, "Novus Orbis Librarium" earns bonus points for being passable Latin for "New World Library".
- Lost: Via Domus is an egregious example. In the game, Locke translates the Title Drop as "The Way Home," which is apparently what the game creators meant, except that it would be Via Domum. This is actually pretty funny when you realize that it's the same mistake as in Life of Brian above. Most people just call it Lost The Game though, because that's funny too.
- There's an online game called "Gladiatus: Hero of Rome." It (ostensibly) involves playing as a Gladiator in Ancient Rome. The title is nothing short of weird, considering it seems to be a "latinized" version of the word "gladiator." Especially considering that the latin word for "gladiator" is, (surprise!) "gladiator."
Web Animation
Web Comics
Western Animation
- Winx Club, which uses a Latin-based spell system, gives us many such gems, including a one-time spell whose sole purpose was to turn a motorcycle into a pig. The incantation? "Oinkus Interceptus". This only applies to the American translation, though; the British translation and the Italian original don't use children's rhymes or Incredibly Lame Pun s for their spells.
- The educational but mind-blowing cartoon Cyberchase included a recurring location called Radopolis (rad), ruled over by King Dudicus (dude). It still makes me cringe.
- The Simpsons — "You are, as they say in Latin, a dorkus malorkus."
- Don't forget the 'spells' in the Treehouse of Horror Halloween parody.
- Many of the Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons in Looney Tunes introduce the pair with fake scientific names usually derived in this manner. Examples include Speedometrus Rapidus for the Roadrunner, and Famishus Famishus for the Coyote.
- Tiny Toon Adventures had one short which introduced Fifi le Fume as "Sexius Skunkus". Amazing that the censors let that pass...
- Kid Icarus of Captain N The Game Master establishes his overwhelming Roman-ness (Greek-ness?) by ending random words with "-icus".
- South Park: "Rectus! Dominus! Cheesy Poofs!"
- Additionally, a secret group surrounding the ancestor of Peter Rabbit, the true pope, introduced him by chanting "Here Comes Peter Cotton Tail" in Dog Latin (which become obvious when they get to "Hippitus, Hoppitus").
Other
- One Blue Oyster Cult album is titled "Cultosaurus Erectus".
- This New York Times op-ed.
Truth In Television
- Real Life example: Scientists when naming new species or elements will often name them after famous scientists or political figures, though they don't normally tack "-us" on the end.
- They often add "-i" (for the genitive) instead. This gets really silly when the person being honored is named "Ishii".
- Silly? are you sure?
- Elements get "ium." Most of the transuranic elements—elements with atomic numbers higher than uranium's 92, which are mostly synthesized in laboratories— fit this: einsteinium, californium, berkelium, bohrium...the list goes on. Most famously, two different groups of scientists synthesized elements 93 and 94 independently, and both independently came up with the names "neptunium" and "plutonium" (to follow element 92, uranium).
- Does that mean Plutonium is no longer really an element?
- It will always be an element in our hearts...
- Various current brands of natural yoghurt contain bacterial cultures with "marketing names" such as Bifidus Digestivum, Bifidus Activo or Digestivum Essensis. This can also get a bit silly.
- Strigiphilus garylarsoni, a biting louse named for the cartoonist of The Far Side, is only one recent example.
- Larson also got another honor, but not in a species' name. See the Thagomizer on That Other Wiki.
- Terry Pratchett has an extinct species of turtle (what else?) (Psephophorus terrypratchetti) named after him, and keeps a fossil of it on his desk.
- Not to mention Gingoites nannyoggiae, (at least, as reported by the Art of Discworld), the scientific name of a particular Mesozoic plant.
- Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits has the Masiakasaurus knopfleri named after him (prompting many jokes about being an aging rock dinosaur)
- At first, Jurassic Park's movie looked a bit odd to palaeontologists, as the "velociraptors" were far too large. Then along came a discovery of a raptor-family dinosaur in Utah, every bit as big as the raptors in the movie and even bigger. It was dubbed Utahraptor spielbergi.
- Technically, the animal is now called Utahraptor ostrommaysi. Another scientist, however, named a species of pterosaur (flying reptiles related to the dinosaurs) of the genus Coloborhynchus, "Coloborhynchus spielbergi", although its validity as a separate species of Coloborhynchus is currently under debate.
- John Cleese now has a lemur named after him. As far as cuteness goes, he wins.
- Archeologists excavating a Mayan artifact site found a pictographic collection containing a carving of a very large, stylized snake; which they unofficially named "montypythonidies".
- On hearing about the newly discovered spider Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi, Stephen Colbert demanded that he get an animal, too. The biologist in question is still choosing an appropriate spider.
- And now the spider has been chosen, and duly named "Aptostichus stephencolberti".
- They couldn't name some kind of bear after him?
- New bear species are not discovered every day...
- Musician Sting has an Amazonian tree frog named after him—Dendropsophus stingi.
- Truth In Television indeed: the very word "television" is a Greek prefix attached to a Latin-derived root, prompting C.P. Scott to remark in 1936: "Television? The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of this device."
- Aaaaaaand he may have been right.
- The same goes for "automobile" — as far as this troper's extremely limited (non-formally learned) language skills can make sense, the name ought to have been "autokineton" (spelling?).
- And in Modern Greek, it is indeed a αυτοκίνητο.
- Amusingly, the same is true for the brown bear, Ursus Arctos. Ursus is Latin for bear, and arctos is Greek for... bear. Considering that Everything Is Worse With Bears, C.P. Scott may have been on to something indeed.
- In centuries past, when Latin was the language of scholarship, it was common for scholars and scientists to "Latinize" their names, adopting either translations or suffixes. Quite appropriately, one was Carl von Linne, aka Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy.
- Linné is actually an inversion of this, as he went from a latinized name to the von Linné surname when he was ennobled.
- This practise was spoofed by Norwegian 1700s author Ludvig Holberg, who invented a character called Rasmus Berg (meaning Hill), who went off and got educated, and returned calling himself "Erasmus Montanus".
- Charles Lutwidge Dodgson translated his first two names into Latin to get Carolus Lodovicus. He swapped the order of the names and re-Anglicized them to get his pen name: Lewis Carroll.
- Jean Cauvin's last name was Latinize to Calvinus (despite being a Francozation of Calvus) befor being Anglicized to Calvin.
- The Jesuits imposed this on several great Chinese philosophers in the course of translating their works into Latin for European readers. Probably the most famous is Confucius, really Kong fu zi or Kong zi, literally "Master Kong"; Mencius (Meng zi, "Master Meng") is another. Other Chinese philosophers and writers are best known in the west by a direct romanization of their Chinese names, largely because the first translations were done in the eighteenth century by Protestant missionaries who eschewed Latin.
- René Descartes latinized his name as Renatus Cartesius. Hence the term "Cartesian" for anything to do with him.
- There is an entire website devoted to proving that scientists have a sense of humor. Among others:
- The fossil fly Carmenelectra shechisme (pronounced "she-kiss-me")
- The three species of spider once thought to be members of the genus Nops, reclassified as Notnops, Taintnops, and Tisentnops
- Another fly called Phthiria relativitae (the "ph" is silent)
- The snail genus Turbo
- And several species of fungus beetle called Gelae baen, Gelae belae, Gelae donut, Gelae fish, and Gelae rol
- See more of this madness here.
- Lalapa lusa (unfortunately neither this species of wasp nor the music festival were named after each other, the word Lollapaloosa being Older Than They Think; but this editor still gets a giggle out of it)
- There is a mammalian gene named Sonic hedgehog. Yes, that "Sonic hedgehog".
- And then they discovered a macrocycle which binds to "Sonic hedgehog" which they promptly named Robotnikinin.
- There is a genus of dinosaur known as Gojirasaurus. Yes, named after that Gojira.
- Same goes for Dracorex Hogwartsia, whose name roughly means "Dragon King of Hogwarts." Yes, that Hogwarts.
- Jack Horner claims Dracorex is just a juvenile Pachycephalosaurus (even though the fossil shows it is fully grown), going so far as to whine to National Geographic about putting it on the cover of one of their issues. He claims its just a juvenile pachy, This Troper claims Horner just has no sense of humor.
- Would the Lorem Ipsum text count?
- It turns out that it was originally actual Latin, but the present form has bits removed, in order to create a homogeneous-looking text with as little actual content as possible. This is so typesetters can concentrate on the layout of the text without being distracted by the meaning.
- Nil Illegitimi Carborundum, and many of its other variants, crop up in fiction from time to time; but the phrase dates back to the real World War II.
- Intel processors: "Pentium" is half Greek-ish ("Penta" = five) and half Latin-ish ("-ium"). "Celeron" is the opposite ("Celer" = fast in Latin, "-on" is a Greek-ish suffix)
Web Original
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