Fascinating story of the Baron! May I offer another explanation for the Hebrew character. If it were the letter nun, it would make more sense to just call it C-shaped as English already has a similar letter. To my eyes, if you look at the whole moth (i.e. both sides together), the best match is the aleph (א) which we don't have anything similar to in English, and so would make more sense. But I do prefer the Baron idea! (Although I've always thought it weird when people refer to Jews as Hebrews as it's not particularly accurate!)
Yes I see what you mean by nun/aleph. I think the aleph character looks similar to the Greek lower case chi. I don’t know how well versed in the Hebrew alphabet the early entomologists would have been - I guess they’re likely to have known Greek better, in which case chi would have been their first choice (but there’s also a moth called Grey Chi)!
Yeah I think the main difference would be the symmetry of the two letters. As far as I can tell, the grey Chi’s markings resemble the character for which it’s named even less. I’m getting the sense that entomologists should just stay away from ancient alphabets (or aleph-bets)
Fascinating story of the Baron! May I offer another explanation for the Hebrew character. If it were the letter nun, it would make more sense to just call it C-shaped as English already has a similar letter. To my eyes, if you look at the whole moth (i.e. both sides together), the best match is the aleph (א) which we don't have anything similar to in English, and so would make more sense. But I do prefer the Baron idea! (Although I've always thought it weird when people refer to Jews as Hebrews as it's not particularly accurate!)
Yes I see what you mean by nun/aleph. I think the aleph character looks similar to the Greek lower case chi. I don’t know how well versed in the Hebrew alphabet the early entomologists would have been - I guess they’re likely to have known Greek better, in which case chi would have been their first choice (but there’s also a moth called Grey Chi)!
Yeah I think the main difference would be the symmetry of the two letters. As far as I can tell, the grey Chi’s markings resemble the character for which it’s named even less. I’m getting the sense that entomologists should just stay away from ancient alphabets (or aleph-bets)
Yes I agree, I couldn’t work out the Grey Chi’s resemblance at all!
‘Charlesing’ - I’ve done it; now I know what to call it!