Use of "de" or "De" in names

I don't know if this is the right group for this question, but here goes. I've heard contradictory answers. I suppose the Chicago Manual of Style could settle this, but I wondered if someone knew it off the top of their head.

When writing names that have "de" in them, is it capitalized? What if it is in the title of an essay or whatnot?

Alexis de Tocqueville or Alexis De Tocqueville?

Then when you refer to his name in the text, is it "As Tocqueville would say" or "As De Tocqueville would say" or "As de Tocqueville would say"?

Others:

Alain de Botton (anyone know how to pronounce this name?)

Leonardo da Vinci

Al-an de Bott-on, I think.

I think that the use of de or De is not subject to standardisation. It all depends on what the author uses (or his publisher).

Alexis de Tocqueville
and
As Tocqueville would say (Beethoven but van Gogh - even if both have van)
is what my textbooks were saying way back when.

The official rule was that there is no rule. de, von, van and the like are not capitalized unless if the person had been capitalizing it or the language that they are coming from capitalizes always - in which case it should be capitalized. The different style manuals have their own rule for lists and beginning of sentences....

NGS has a manual online: http://stylemanual.ngs.org/home/D/de-d-etc
APA as well: http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/02/how-to-capitalize-author-names-in-apa-...

Has he anglicized his name then? He was born in Switzerland so I would expect he name to be pronounced Al-a (nasal) de Boat-o (nasal)

My understanding is that Alexis de Tocqueville would be sorted under the T's, but it would be written as "de Tocqueville, Alexis" -- but I could certainly be wrong.

Leonardo da Vinci is a different case, because he didn't have a surname as we would think of it. (If memory serves, his birth happened in circumstances that might be called "questionable." But again, I could be wrong.) He goes under the L's.

<pet peeve> Like that artist I was just talking about, Chrétien de Troyes didn't have a surname, though in his case it seems to be because he simply didn't have one (or didn't want to use it or whatnot). The "de Troyes" is literally "of Troyes" -- think of it like me publishing under the name "Anna of Brooklyn." Sort him under the C's. </pet peeve>

3> Ludwig von Beethoven was German.
van Gogh was from the Netherlands.

The words may be equivalent, but not quite the same, and different rules apply in different countries.

There was a recent explanation by one member that Belgium and the Netherlands don't handle 'van' the same in their library catalogues.

>6 MarthaJeanne:

I know. But when you get a name, the nationality is not always obvious...:)
Same is for capitalizing...

The problem with library rules is that they also change from time to time. Of course, if you are very conscientious you can look the person up in Wikipedia to find out his or her nationality and then catalogue him according to that country's rules. (Which gives you Tocqueville, Alexis de)
But surely the nice thing about LT is that you can decide which rules you wish to follow in your own cataloguing? As long as all the possible variants are collated under one entry so that they can be combined properly?

I guess we have to do a best guess based on practices of our own languages. "Van," "von," "de," "di" "da" are functionally the same; they mean roughly "from" or "of" in English.

In America, many people capitalize those prefixes or combine them into one word; to use an example of a person I know, when the di Salvo family emigrated, they became Di Salvo or DiSalvo, and they expect their name to be alphabetized as a "D." Van Gogh, in American English, is capitalized and alphabetized by the "V." But my Dutch-speaking friends tell me if they alphabetized by the the "V" in the Netherlands, most of the phone book would be under "V." So for them, van Gogh is under "G." But in my catalog, I'll use the V, because I'm cataloging in American English.

However, I would use extreme caution in any of these cases before applying a Canonical Name.

>5 AnnaClaire:: Ditto on the pet peeve. It's a constant struggle with my students -- we refer to Bernard of Clairvaux as Bernard, not Clarivaux; to Eleanor of Aquitaine as Eleanor, not Aquitaine; and to Thomas Aquinas as Thomas, not Aquinas (I may be fighting a losing battle on that last one, even if "Aquinas" is a toponym just like Eleanor's Aquitaine, Bernard's Clairvaux, and Chretien's Troyes).

>5 AnnaClaire:, 10: That's because they didn't have surnames as we know them in the Middle Ages, not even the great aristocratic families. (Plantagenet or Valois, anyone?) Well, at least it provides work for librarians. When in doubt, have a peek at the authority files of your preferred national library.

Thank you for the informative replies. I suspected this subject had some depth to it.

A college French teacher told me to use "De Tocqueville" instead of "Tocqueville" in "As De Tocqueville would say…" because the "de" means "of" like "da" in "Da Vinci" -- those are not last names or surnames. (Are they names of places?) She said if I write "The letter was written to Da Vinci" then I should say "The letter was written to De Tocqueville." But I had been writing "The letter was written to Tocqueville." So…

> 12 That's very interesting. But from the example you give I would assume she was referring to spoken or written texts, not cataloguing as in a bibliography. Usage is obviously different in different languages, because in German, the "von" in Otto von Bismarck is the equivalent of "de" in Tocqueville, but most people would say or write "As Bismarck would say..." I suppose the deeper you delve, the more complex it becomes...

I never gave it much thought,but yes, the German ones do tend to be dropped that way. Not the case for Dutch ones though, as has been noted in this thread already with Van Gogh (and also, if the first name is dropped, the prefix is upgraded to a capital letter).

>12 barney67: When you write a letter in Dutch to Tocqueville, than the letter was written to the city or village Tocqueville.
When you write a letter to de Tocqueville, than the letter was written to the person with the lastname de Tocqueville.

>13 MissWatson:
In Dutch we never (99,9%) write the prefixes "van", "van de", "de", "den", "der"(which also means "van de"), etc. with a capital.
And above all we never search on those words. We search on: Gogh, Vincent van; etc. etc.

>14 .Monkey.: That's only the case with Vincent van Gogh; but then he's already the subject in a conversation. If you just start talking about a Van Gogh, it can be anybody who has van Gogh as lastname.
Besides that it can cause you a lot of trouble when you leave the prefix out, because it can also happen that somebody else has that name. I have a prefix in my name and to me it sounds very weird when it's not being used. It's simply not my name.

yet my Dutch ancestors somewhere along the way decided our last name was DeWitt :) . . . but try getting modern computer databases to keep it uniform (most refuse to capitalize the W) . . . Whenever some government office claims they can't find me, I have to remind them to try all the different possibilities DeWitt, de Witt (which often puts me in with the W's or before the Dea. . .s) . . .

I did enjoy the discussion above . . . just pretty sure this is one of life's dilemmas that will not be (re)solved in my lifetime :)

16 > just pretty sure this is one of life's dilemmas that will not be (re)solved in my lifetime :)

Which in one way is pretty wonderful. One less bit of homogenization in the world!

>16 LucindaLibri: In the older days it happened very often that the lastnames were changed by mistakes in hearing or writing. Often there was only one person who could read and write at that time and the people trusted that person. Some of my ancestors, mostly woman, used to sign with a simple cross in 16th and 17th century.
I give you an example of the name Gerritsen.
It is also been written as: Gerrits - Gerritse - Garritsen - Gerritzen - Gerretsen.
Patronymic based on the name Gerrit with the suffix-sen, which means: son: "Son of Gerrit".

And than we have the variants and/or compilations:
Gaartman?, Garratt, Garrets, Garretsen, Garretzen, Garrits, Garritsen, Garritzen, (Gars, Garsen, Garson, Garssen), Gart, Gartsen, Gartz, Geeraadts, Geeraard, Geeraeds, Geeraedts, Geeraerdts, Geeraert, Geeraerts, Geeraets, Geerards, Geerars, Geerarts, Geeraths, Geerats, Geeratz, Geerdes, Geerdinck, Geerding, Geerdink, Geerds, Geerdsema, Geerdsen, Geereking, Geerets, Geerinck, Geerinckx, Geering, Geerings, Geerink, Geerits, Geerking, Geerrink, Geers, Geerse, Geersema, Geersen, Geersenga, Geersing, Geersinga, Geerssen, Geerssinga, Geertjens, Geertjes, Geertman?, Geerts, Geertse, Geertsema, Geertsen, Geertsma, Geertz, Geertzema, Geertzen, Geraads, Geraadts, Geraards, Geraats, Gerades, Gerads, Geradts, Geraeds, Geraedts, Geraerds, Geraerdts, Geraerts, Geraets, Gerard, Gerardi, Gerards, Gerardts, Gerardu, Gerarts, Gerats, Gerdes, Gerdessen, Gerdez, Gerding, Gerdingh, Gerds, Gerdsen, Gerdt, Gerdzen, Geres, Gerets, Gerhard, Gerhards, Gerhardt, Gerhardus, Gerharts, Gerhartz, Gerharz, Gering, Gerink, Geris, Gerissen, Gerits, Geritz, Gerrads, Gerraets, Gerrards, Gerrats, Gerrekens, Gerres, Gerrese, Gerressen, Gerrets, Gerretschen, Gerretse, Gerretsen, Gerretsma, Gerretson, Gerretze, Gerretzen, Gerrickens, Gerridsen, Gerridzen, Gerriesen, Gerrietsen, Gerrijts, Gerring, Gerringa, Gerris, Gerrisse, Gerrissen, Gerrist, Gerrits, Gerritschen, Gerritse, Gerritsen Mulkes, Gerritsen Plaggert, Gerritsen van der Hoop, Gerritsen Timmer, Gerritsen Weustink, Gerritsens, Gerritsjans, Gerritsma, Gerritz, Gerritze, Gerritzen, Gers, Gerse, Gersee, Gersen, Gersie, Gersjes, Gerson, Gersonius, Gersons, Gertges, Gerth?, Gerts, Gertsen, Gertsma, Gertz, Gertzen, Geurt ..., Ghering, Girard, Gjertsen, Goertz, Göertz, Goertzen, Goerz, Gort ..., Graatsma, Gradisen, Gradissen, Gradus, Gradussen, Grates, Van Zwam Gerritsen.

FYI this can be found at the Meertens Institute.
http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/cms/en/meertens-institute

Leaving the 'von' out in written or spoken language in german doesn't always happen either: when you talk about the Sound of Music, you'd talk about von Trapp saying something.

Sorting by van or de in .NL would just be a nightmare.

Yes, but as already stated, the Flemish think different. (This makes a lot of author combining necessary - never mind though).

p.s.: And fortunately we're free to enter the name in either format in our own catalogues, according to our wish.

19> Not in Austria. In spite of the movie, in Austria it has been illegal to use the noble 'von' since 1919. Except of course during the Nazi period. Even Otto von Habsburg and his family are just Otto Habsburg, etc. in Austria. The only exception I know of is von Karajan who made the point that that is his 'Kuenstlername' - his stage name. Even so, he is generally referred to here as Karajan.

If you go to the Talk page for Wikipedia's entry for "Hildegard of Bingen", you will see someone a few years ago objecting to the name of the article on the grounds that musicians seem quite insistent that she be Hildegard von Bingen.

The problems, of course, are legion. Although a dialect of medieval German would have been her native language, she is known in the records as "Hildegardis" (the latinized version of her name), with a variety of other titles (beata, sancta, prophetissa, sybilla, etc.), but only rarely as "Hildegardis Bingensis", which is the Latin toponym, "Hildegard from/of Bingen". Furthermore, she only moved to Bingen in the second half of her life; in the first half, she was a nun at the Monastery of St. Disibod, about 20 miles south of Bingen (and as a cloistered nun, she would simply have been "Hildegard", or perhaps "Sister Hildegard"). Before she entered the monastery as a young teenager (or perhaps "tween"), had anyone bothered to refer to her with a tononym, it would have been "Hildegard of Bermersheim", as her parents were of the lower nobility of that town.

Thanks #22, I had never heard the word toponym before. Now it's obvious, sort of.

I'm surprised that this discussion has gone on for so long without a reference to the AACR (Anglo-American cataloguing rules). It can answer all your questions. That's what it's for.

I have a copy downstairs, but for it's not convenient for me to get it right now. (Just got the carpet cleaned, cat on my lap ....) Simple work-around is to go into the authority file of your national library, as someone already mentioned.

If you download your book info from a library source the author data ought to be correct. Amazon publication data has been entered by tweaking squirrels.

Of course, for your own library, you can follow whatever rules you want.

Also helpful is ALA rules for filing catalog cards. (Even though most libraries don't file cards anymore!)

This is mostly about names that are neither English nor American.

#27 Both rule books cover non-English or American names.

Ehr, yes..., I guess - but that's still just American rules to deal with them. The rules are not necessarily the same everywhere on the planet. Rules vary from language to language, or even from country to country.

The AACR have different rules for different nationalities. I figure it's easier to use a system that's already been worked out, is standard among libraries in the English-speaking world, and helps avoid confusing inconsistencies.

Don't get me wrong: I'm fine with that - considering a majority of LT users are American. As long as you don't start forcing those rules on the rest of us, no problem.

>31 Nicole_VanK:
I don't see how I could possibly force the AACR on anyone.

I suppose you could check with your national library or cataloguing authority if it's important to you.

Have you ever used WorldCat?

OK, got the Rules next to me. Give me a name plus nationality.

Hildegarde, per LOC, is properly "Hildegard, Saint, 1098-1179".

>34 IreneF:
Is Joan of Arc properly "Joan, of Arc, Saint, 1412-1431" or "Joan of Arc, Saint, 1412-1431"? Some works try to have it both ways, and others even try to introduce the French version.

(Not that the LoC version is period-correct, mind you: she called herself "Jeanne la Pucelle" when there was any need to be specific about just which Joan she was.)

It's not a question of correctness, it's a question of consistency; conformity, if you will.

Anyway, Jeanne was illiterate and didn't write anything, so unless a medium has channeled her spirit it's not a problem for LT. If you want to catalog works "written" by spirit guides and the like, then I can refer you to the appropriate Rule.

Ah. Subject headings. Don't have to worry about that can of worms with LT.

But in case you were wondering, here's the Name Authority file for the Maid of France:

http://authorities.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?AuthRecID=1887354&v1=1&...

I think LT pulls subjects from an outside source (or sources) that is a little dirty, which is why you see the various references to the same person.

36> If you want to catalog works "written" by spirit guides and the like, then I can refer you to the appropriate Rule.

that would be interesting

LT pulls subjects from the MARC record of whatever library you use for your source when you add.

#38 In AACR2R, it's 22.14. I don't have a copy of RDA so can't cite the newest info.

#40
22.14 refers you back to 21.26

Basically you add "(Spirit)" to the putative author's name, and make an added entry for the medium.

My copy is from about 2006.