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I was browsing the OLD today and then I noticed the following entry:

Stagīrītēs, Stagē- ~-ae m. A person who originates from Stagira in Macedonia.

Two examples are given there:

Aristotelem ~em Cic. Ac. 1.17

β Var. R. 2.1.3

For some reason, the online Loeb edition of Cicero's Academica (1933) has "Aristotelem Stagiriten" (not Stagiritem, as the OLD says):

"[...] nam cum Speusippum sororis filium Plato philosophiae quasi heredem reliquisset, duos autem praestantissimo studio atque doctrina, Xenocratem Calchedonium et Aristotelem Stagiriten [...]"

I don't have a physical copy of Cicero Academica, and I wonder if Stagiriten in the online version is a typo?

Neue and Wagener 1902 (v. 4 Register, p. 340) adds more data. First, they have Stagiritem for Cic. Ac. 1.17 (v.1, p. 57) and also "Stagirites" (Flavius Vopiscus, Divus Aurelianus) - see the passage below:

"an Platonem magis commendat quod Atheniensis fuerit quam quod unicum sapientiae munus inluxerit? aut eo minores invenientur Aristoteles Stagirites Eleatesque Zenon aut Anacharsis Scytha quod in minimis nati sint viculis, cum illos ad caelum omnis philosophiae virtus extulerit?" (p. 198, 1932 Loeb edition of Historia Augusta, v. 3)

The online Loeb edition of Varro's Res rusticae has "Aristoteles Stagerites":

"... ut credidit Pythagoras Samius et Aristoteles Stagerites ..."

The relevant passage in Leumann 1977 seems to be "D. Männliche Namen auf lat. -ēs für gr. -ης" (p. 458), which says the following:

D2. Gr. -ης -ου, mythologische Namen in der klass. Dichtung. b) Mischflexion in klass. Zeit: -ēs -ēn -ē, aber gen. dat. -ae [...]. Bei den Namen ist sie verständlich, also ist sie wohl da auf die Appellativa übertragen."

Σταγῑρίτης -ου

I haven't found the relevant passage in Neue and Wagener 1902 Formenlehre der lateinischen Sprache (v.1, Das Substantivum, pp. 513-517) yet.

So, my question is: what would the declension paradigm of Stagirites in Latin be then? I wonder based on what evidence the OLD says the genitive is -ae (and not the expected -is, at least in Classical Latin?) Are there any other Greek proper nouns in Latin ending in -es (nom.) that have -ae in the genitive? What is the origin of this genitive form? And most importantly, how do you determine if such a Greek proper noun is of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or mixed declension type?

See my attempt below (* stands for an unattested form). I used the declension paradigm of Socrates, with some modifications, as a model.

cf. Kühner and Holzweissig 1912 (1994) (§96, p. 421; their example is Anchīsēs) but they don't list all the attested forms, e.g. the TLL entry (s.v. Anchisa) also mentions acc. Anchisem and Anchisam.

Borovskii and Boldyrev 1975, p. 48 (§76); in §79 they say that Greek proper nouns in -ēs alternate between the first three declension types, quite often having forms belonging to different declension types (their example is Aristīdēs); e.g. the TLL entry mentions Aristidi, Aristidae, and Aristidis as the attested genitive forms.

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What about this paradigm - is it accurate?

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    FWIW, Academica in project Gutenberg reads Stagiritem
    – Rafael
    Oct 28, 2020 at 16:08

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As long as this is not an irregular word, it should decline like so:

  • N. Stagīrītēs
  • g. Stagīrītae
  • d. Stagīrītae
  • ac. Stagīrītēn / Stagīrītam
  • [abl. Stagīrītē / Stagīrītā]

Here are some of Dickinson's examples

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    I had to downvote: the declension of Aristotle given isn't correct (see Wiktionary or L&S for the correct declension), nor is it true that all Greek nouns ending in -ης have the same paradigm. The analogy with Anchises is correct though!
    – brianpck
    Oct 28, 2020 at 20:12
  • @brianpck any better now?
    – eyesplice17
    Oct 28, 2020 at 20:17
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    Definitely enough to remove the downvote! (Though you still have the comment about both names declining the same way, which isn't quite right.) I think the explicit answer given here is that, although we don't have attested genitive and dative forms of this word, we can take them by analogy from other non-contracted masculine first-declension Greek nouns. For this to be a slam-dunk case, I'd just want to review other similar Greek loanwords to see if there are exceptions.
    – brianpck
    Oct 28, 2020 at 20:27
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    I can't speak for brianpck, but I think if someone were to do it, it'd be Cicero.
    – eyesplice17
    Oct 28, 2020 at 21:21
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    @AlexB Honestly I'm not sure how to judge it...perhaps there are other loanwords of that kind that have attested plurals. I was about to say that such a plural would be useless, but I literally just read 5 minutes ago the following line in Rousseau's preface to his Second Discourse: "...the following problem would not seem to me unworthy of the Aristotles and Plinys of our century...." Unfortunately he wrote in French, not Latin!
    – brianpck
    Oct 28, 2020 at 22:03

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