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Subject: Re: (semi-ot) "van der" Names

Author: Dave Gomboc

Date: 00:26:09 03/24/04

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On March 24, 2004 at 00:11:26, Johan de Koning wrote:

>On March 22, 2004 at 22:11:08, Dave Gomboc wrote:
>
>>In my thesis I want to refer to van der Meulen's work (that was published in
>>Advances in Computer Chess 5).  I have the following sentence fragment:
>>
>>"van der Meulen (1989) provides algorithms for..." (blah, blah).
>>
>>In English, it's pretty much compulsory to start the sentence with a capital
>>letter, but I don't want to rearrange the sentence so that the name is not at
>>the front.  However, using "Van der Meulen" just makes me think that it's
>>spelled incorrectly.
>
>It's a can of worms.
>A rather tiny can though. :-)
>
>Regarding your "problem" it even isn't a can at all, since it is
>common practice *in Dutch* to capitalize the family name *iff* the
>first name is omitted. Hence no offences will be caused by:
>- According to Maarten van der Meulen this is fine.
>- According to Van der Meulen this is fine.
>- Van der Meulen suggests this is fine.
>- It seems De Koning is a lunatic.
>
>But when going outside The Netherlands things are getting unclear.
>And that's where the can opens. It seems (to me at least) that no
>one knows whether to list Maarten under M or under V. And the ones
>in favor of M will still have a hard time deciding on brand names
>like "Van der Moolen brokers" or "The King chess engines".
>
>But back to the subject: when in Rome do as the Italians. :-)
>And if all else fails: do as the Dutch. :-)
>
>... Johan

Okay, so it's clear I should be using "Van der Meulen ... " in my sentence.  In
my references, to list under M or under V is still unclear.

Right?

Dave



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