Huh, interesting. I still think “Socrateses” is preferable in English—generally foreign imports into English don’t pluralize according to source-language patterns other than the best-known ones; e.g., if someone writes “octopodes” you can be pretty sure they are doing it for humour, and if someone writes “censūs” you can be pretty sure you’ve somehow dropped into an alternate universe.
Still, I hadn’t realised that there was any standard Greek plural for “Socrates” (it’s not obvious that proper nouns necessarily have plural forms, after all) and in particular hadn’t realised that “Socratai” would be the canonical thing.
I don’t think I agree that “Socrati” is a good anglicization of “Σωκράται” if you are going to use a Greek plural, though. Is there any other case where a Greek plural ending -ai turns into an English version in -i?
Huh, interesting. I still think “Socrateses” is preferable in English—generally foreign imports into English don’t pluralize according to source-language patterns other than the best-known ones; e.g., if someone writes “octopodes” you can be pretty sure they are doing it for humour, and if someone writes “censūs” you can be pretty sure you’ve somehow dropped into an alternate universe.
Still, I hadn’t realised that there was any standard Greek plural for “Socrates” (it’s not obvious that proper nouns necessarily have plural forms, after all) and in particular hadn’t realised that “Socratai” would be the canonical thing.
I don’t think I agree that “Socrati” is a good anglicization of “Σωκράται” if you are going to use a Greek plural, though. Is there any other case where a Greek plural ending -ai turns into an English version in -i?