Does anyone know of a reliable way to find quantities for less common words? L&S is certainly good for the vast majority of problems, but right now I have to add macra to a large amount of text and sometimes I don’t know where to search, especially if it’s a noun that falls out of Classical usage.
I do understand that this somewhat begs the question that if it’s not available in Classical Latin then all quantities will be conjectural, but certainly for some other ones we will have later Christian or later literature that makes use of them. For instance, L&S does not list Christophorus, but by checking that xriw has long i I learned that it’s Chrīstophorus, etc. This will be possible in some, but not in all cases, and that’s what made me wonder if such a dictionary existed.
For the record, the noun that made me type this was “Veronica”, if anyone should know.
Dictionaries may be your only feasible option. OLD especially, though it fails to mark even the known hidden quantities because of its weird principle (these include lēctus, rēctus, māximus). ThlL obviously. Etymological dictionaries. The Finnishesque double-letter writing for long vowels from a short period (this gives us e.g. Mārcus, although we knew it anyway). Romance studies. The matter of loan-words (e.g. Welsh points to the fact that the non-poetic word uīuerra had an ī). All this is scholarly work, which not everyone will agree on. Best compromise is in dictionaries, as long as you remember to be wary. I often like to double- or triple- or quadruple-check these things (if I’m in the mood).
As Veronica is from Βερενίκη (irregularly of course), I suppose it can be conjectured as Vĕrŏnīca. English and Spanish antepenult stress supposes short ĭ, the penult stress of Russian Вероника long ī. If we want to assume paretymological influence from uēra (this is not necessary), then we could put the long vowel into the name, too.
I got scared today because I somehow knew that signum had long i (sīgnum), but L&S, for instance, doesn’t mark it, so decided that looking for alternatives was necessary. Thanks for the note on the Veronica, too.
Houston, we’ve got a problem. Latin sources would point to sīgnum, but Romance languages all require sĭgnum (Italian segno, Spanish seña, Portuguese senha etc.).