Page:A dictionary of the plant names of the Philippine Islands (1903).djvu/17

9 well-known species are spelled quite diilerently from their accepted form to-day. One example from Camell's work, published in the year 1704, is sufficient to illustrate this point: Camell's "Conyza Helenitis odoris salviae" is undoubtedly the plant known to-day as Blumea balsamifera DC, and Camell gives the following native names for his species, which should be compared with those given under Blumea halsamifera on page 129: Samhon, Lacarbulan, Lagdanbulan, Anacadbulan, Olacdanbulan, Guitingguitan, Gabuen, Lalacdan, Ayolan, Alibon, Hantilibun.

None of the names of these earlier authors, not found in later publications, are included in the present publication, for the reason that we can not accurately identify many of the species.

So far as the dialects of the various names were determinable they have been specified by the following abbreviations: B., Bicol; Cag., Cagayan; Ig., Igorrote; Il., Ilocano; Mang., Mangyane; Pamp., Pampangan; Pang., Pangasinan; Sp., Spanish; Sp.-Fil., Spanish-Filipino; T., Tagalog; V., Visayan; Z., Zambales. Frequently, where the dialect of the name is not specified, the name of the island or province where the name is used has been given in parentheses. It has been impossible to identify the dialects of a large number of the names for the reason that many of the Spanish investigators did not consider such data of sufficient value to warrant recording the same. With the exception of the data compiled from the herbarium of this Bureau, the authority for the dialects of the various names is that of the several Spanish investigators, and certain allowance must be made for errors.

Most of the Spanish authors gave little or no attention to accentuation, and frequently where accent marks were given they were erroneously placed. In the present paper an attempt has been made to properly accent the various words, and with this end in view all the names have been carefully checked over with various native employees of the office familiar with many of the dialects.

As the names have been compiled from different works of Spanish authors, it is to be presumed that the latter recorded the native names by the phonetic system of spelling, giving the different letters the same values as in the Spanish language. A cursory examination of the following work will show at once that there is a great variation in the spelling of the same word, e and i, o and u, and frequently i and y have the same values and are interchangeable. With the exception of n͠g, which is pronounced like ng in sing, bring,