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I've been wondering about the -myia/-mya business (Anthomyia, Pegomya). Again it comes back to Robineau-Desvoidy! His 1830 Essaie sur les Myodaires is available free online, so I had a look. All his own coinages (eg Pegomya, Hylemya, Graphomya) use the simplified spelling, and for Anthomya (sic) he attributes the genus (with this spelling) to Latreille and Fabricius but refers to Anthomyia (Meigen and Fallen) as a synonym.

It looks as if there is something ideological going on here. Was there a spelling reform movement in Revolutionary France?

Actually it is possible (just) to justify the -mya spelling. In Liddell and Scott's Greek Lexicon 'Myia' is the normal word for fly, but 'Mya' is given as the dialect form from Attica. [The only authority for this is Photius, a 9th century AD scholar (who became Patriarch of Constantinople and is a saint in the Orthodox Church). He had access to a lot of Greek literature which is now lost.]

But my impression is that R-D didn't know much Greek or didn't much care. He spells Stomoxys (Geoffroy) 'Stomoxis'. I think it's no surprise that some of his etymologies are hard to fathom.

Incidentally Pegomya could mean 'strong/compact/dense fly' (pegos) or 'well/spring fly (pege = water source). He seems often to name flies after where he found them (Hylemya on a piece of wood?), so maybe he caught this one on a well.

Sorry for the essay - got carried away!