Bella???

[kkersey_austin]

For what it's worth, Lewis and Short is searchable online (how cool is
that?!) and shows the "a" in "bellatrix" to be long. What this entails
as far as stressing which syllable - I'll let someone else figure
out.  

In any case, I don't think that how either the Ancient Romans *or*
modern English schoolchildren pronounced "bellatrix" has much bearing
on the proper pronunciation of Bellatrix's name. Given the
preponderance of astronomically-derived names in the Black family, it
seems pretty clear to me that she was named after the *star*
Bellatrix. And that star's name does seem to have a standard English
pronunciation: BEL-la-trix.

(If I sound like some sort of expert on this, I certainly don't mean
to - I just looked it up on two or three web sites, including the one
for the Earth and Sky radio program, 'cause I thought they would know:
http://www.earthsky.org/skywatching/pronunciation.php )

By the same reasoning: DRAY-ko

I am enjoying the discussion of Latin pronunciation though. Way back
in high school, I took a year of Latin and then skipped a level to
join the third/fourth year class. My classmates, who had started their
studies under the previous teacher, pronounced their Latin with a
noticable Scottish accent. 

This is just about all I remember, apart from the opening line of The
Aeneid, from my high school Latin studies: 

  Nonne summus homines?
  Summus DEVO! D-E-V-O!

Hmmmm, I'm thinking now I might have been better off taking that
"personal typing" course instead, after all.

OK then, back to lurking...

Karen