Avellanus, Arcadius, 1851-1935

Arcadius Avellanus, born Mogyoróssy Arkád (6 February 1851 – 16 June 1935), was a Hungarian American scholar of Latin and a proponent of Living Latin. Mogyoróssy was born in Esztergom. Few details of his life in Europe are known with certainty; he is said to have spoken Latin as a child before he was fluent in Hungarian. He studied extensively in Europe and used Latin whenever possible, in preference to any other language. He emigrated to the United States in 1878, where he adopted a Latin translation of his original name; the common hazel is "mogyoró" in Hungarian and Corylus avellana in Latin. Avellanus edited the Praeco Latinus ("Latin Herald") in Philadelphia from 1894 to 1902. He later taught at a number of second- and third-level institutions, becoming a professor at St. John's College in Brooklyn. He founded a Latin-speaking club known as the Societas Gentium Latina, Inc. On his eightieth birthday the club held a dinner in his honor in one of the Hungarian restaurants where he gathered nightly with friends with whom he could converse in Latin. Avellanus advocated Latin as an international auxiliary language, deriding Esperanto as "Desperanto".