Remarks

In her description of Kwonkan, Main (1983) failed to specify the gender of the name. Article 30.2 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature has directions concerning retroactively determining the gender of genus-group names.

Articles 30.2.1 and 30.2.2 don’t apply as the name Kwonkan was derived from a noun that does not have gender in a modern European language (Article 30.2.1) and Main (1983) did not nominate a gender (Article 30.2.2). Article 30.2.4 does not apply as the name does not end in -a, -um, -on or -u.

Article 30.2.3 states “If no gender was specified, the name takes the gender indicated by its combination with one or more adjectival species-group names of the originally included nominal species.” Of the six originally included names, we can deduce the following:

• Kwonkan anatolion is a non-classical rendition of the Greek anatole, “a rising, sunrise, east” (Brown 1956). The gender is uncertain.
• Kwonkan eboracum is an indeclinable noun.
• Kwonkan goongarriensis and K. wonganensis are Latin adjectives, either masculine or feminine, but not neuter (which would result in -ense suffixes).
• Kwonkan moriartii is an indeclinable patronym.
• Kwonkan silvestre is derived from silvestre, a Latin adjective meaning “living in woodlands” (Brown 1956) which is neuter. The other form of this word, silvestris, is a Latin adjective that can be male and female.

In summary, K. silvestre is neuter, and K. goongarriensis and K. wonganensis are either masculine or feminine, but definitely not neuter. Therefore, we feel that Article 30.2.3 does not resolve the issue and we adopt Article 30.2.4 which states “If no gender was specified or indicated, the name is to be treated as masculine….” Most names retain the current spelling, except for the following:

• Kwonkan silvestre becomes K. silvestris.
• Kwonkan turrigera becomes K. turriger.