How do you pronounce helice?

[bugboy]

Whilst chasing a helice on the south coast recently with a fellow enthusiast, the subject came up of how it's pronounced: Many years ago when I first got into butterflies I said hel-ice. These days I always say hel-ee-see (probably having heard someone else pronounce it like that) but the friend I was with had heard someone else pronounce it hel-ee-kee or el-ee-kee. Google and youtube seem to agree with the latter, giving it a silent 'H' and a hard 'C'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVMiEU-vMyY

[David M]

I guess if you are true to Latin then it'll be 'Eh-lee-cheh', although personally I pronounce it 'hell-eece'.

[millerd]

I suspect "helice" isn't Latin at all, it's Greek - like lots of butterfly nomenclature (the species names for the Peacock ("io"), or the Clouded Apollo ("mnemosyne"), or the genus of the Green Hairstreak ("Callophrys") for example).

As such, it should be pronounced he-lee-ki (Ἑλίκη [heˈlikɛː] Helike) in classical Greek, but with the "c" softened to an "s" sound in Modern Greek (and no doubt spelled differently). The word itself means "willow" and was, amongst others, the name of a willow-nymph in Greek mythology who nursed Zeus when he was an infant on Crete.

Dave

(At least this avoids the debate about how Latin should be pronounced! Ecclesiatical vs. Classical vs. Modern ad nauseam... )

[Padfield]

Traditional biological pronunciation (in English) bears little relation to authentic Greek or Latin pronunciation. As Dave says, a lot of the words are actually Greek in origin (in other parts of the world, they have other originating languages, so Indian butterflies often have names from Indian mythology, for example), but they are notionally latinised for the purposes of the binomial. When an 'i' is long, as in the genitive (rubi, for example), tradition has it pronounced as in 'eye' - completely unclassical, but think 'Nike'! When it is short, it is as in 'bit'. In Greek, the accent falls on the 'i' here, so I use the traditional 'eye' sound when I'm speaking in English (he-lye-say). However, when I'm talking to Spanish or French speakers, I pronounce it as a French or Spanish person would, with a long 'ee' sound (e- lee-sé).

Guy

PS - I've just checked Wikipedia. That has the accent in the Latinised form of the goddess's name, Helice, falling on the first syllable (unlike the real Greek) and so uses a short 'i' in the middle: 'hell-i-see'.