# antiquitatis investigator



## ~ceLine~

Hi everyone,

I was trying to make a translation from english to latin and I was wondering if _"antiquitatis investigator"_ would be a good translation for _"archaeologist". _However I'm not sure also about  how I can make it _female gender_.

Thank you in advance.


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## Agró

Looks good to me.

"Investigatrix"


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## ~ceLine~

Thank you! The one I've written is in masculine gender, isn't it? How can I change it to the female gender? These little details are getting me confused.


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## Agró

~ceLine~ said:


> Thank you! The one I've written is in masculine gender, isn't it? How can I change it to the female gender? These little details are getting me confused.



In feminine:_ "antiquitatis investigat*rix*"_


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## Scholiast

saluete omnes!

Agró (#4) is quite right about "investigatrix", this is a classically formed feminine 3rd-declension agent, as in _Venus Victrix_. But for modern purposes, the ideal solution lies at hand: _archaeologista_, as a coinage or loan-word from Greek, would work, and like other Latin first-declension words of masculine, or common, gender (_incola_, _nauta_), could suitably in a modern context be applied to either a Lady or a Gentleman involved in archaeological studies. Any adjectives applied would (of course) have to follow in grammatical gender the sex of the particular individual - so "archaeologista clarus" would be "the distinguished [male] archaeologist", "archaeologista clara" the Lady professor.

Also, antiquitat-_*is*_ would be better in the plural, _antiquitat-_*um.*

Otherwise, if it really has to be sex-specific, _rerum antiquarum investigatrix_, but this would both be ponderous and would fail to distinguish clearly between an archaeologist, an historian and an antiquarian.

There will no doubt be other suggestions, and I look forward to seeing them.


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## ~ceLine~

Thank you a lot for your replies!

Scholiast you are right, the people may get confused about the real meaning of the word but I really have a limited vocabulary 
I hadn't known that I can use the word "archaeologista", but it is a modern word, isn't it?


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## Fred_C

Hi,
«Archæologista» is very much less used in modern latin than «archæologus» (either masc. or fem.), which is an adaptation to latin of the word suffixation pattern used in many languages to build the corresponding word, (only English uses the «-ist» suffix).


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## Scholiast

Greetings again.

Fred_C (#7) is right: it would be an Anglicism to write _archaeologista_ (cf. Fr. "archéologue", Germ. "Archäolog"). I was looking for a term that would be sexually neutral, but had forgotten the principle in Greek and words of Greek origin that when nouns are compounded they may be either masc. or fem. in grammatical gender.

Archaeology is indeed a modern science, but note that respectable ancient Greek authorities - Thucydides, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus - use ἀρχαιολογία [_archaeologia_] and its cognate verb ἀρχαιολογέω [_archaeologéo_] to refer to study of, or writing about, antiquities. Also, the word ἀρχαιογράφος [_archaeographos_] is attested for a writer interested in them.


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## ~ceLine~

I hadn't know that I can use these words, thank you a lot for your helps!


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