28 ms·

the surname of the researcher, tenOever, seemed really odd to me, but I found an interview he did a few years back and looks like he's a real person. https://w

by cpdean 6y ago

the surname of the researcher, tenOever, seemed really odd to me, but I found an interview he did a few years back and looks like he's a real person. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WCXuaLXHP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WCXuaLXHP4

nocturnial 6y ago
Why was it odd to be a surname? Maybe I'm wrong, but when translated it's more probable to be a surname than anything else.
- adrianmonk 6y ago
  One thing that threw me off is that sometimes people artificially construct names or modified forms of names. For example, "k8e" is an alternative form of "Katie". Not being familiar with this surname, the first thing I noticed was that "ten" and "ever" are both English words. So I tried reading it as "ten oh ever" or "ten zero ever". I couldn't understand what that would mean, but it was the best interpretation I could think of. In my experience, smart people are more likely to be idiosyncratic, so I wasn't inclined to dismiss the possibility. I tried putting "tenOever" into Google, but the first two pages of results just take me back to him and his research. I tried Wikipedia too and search results there were also dominated by his work. It wasn't until I came to the comments here that I was able to find the real answer.
elric 6y ago
The capitalization is a bit odd, but it's not an uncommon Dutch surname. Usually spelled in two words: "Ten Oever". That would probably be "Banks" in English, as in a river bank. While I'm on the subject, the Dutch (as in the nationality, not the language) are a bit unusual when it comes to surnames. It's common to capitalize every word in a name in many parts of the world, but the Dutch usually don't capitalize words like "ten" or "van" ("from", "of"), which can make for weirdly capitalized names like "Jan ten Oever". Were the same person to live in Belgium, the same Dutch name would become "Jan Ten Oever".
- jonny_eh 6y ago
  https://www.legacytree.com/blog/dutch-surnames https://www.legacytree.com/blog/dutch-surnames
- ta1234567890 6y ago
  Very interesting. Same happens with some Spanish names, for example "del Rio" ("of the River"), "del" is a conjunction of "de" and "el" ("of" and "the"). But most people have accepted their names being "wrongly" capitalized - in the example "Del Rio".
- wiml 6y ago
  My favorite example of this is the famous physicist Gerard 't Hooft. His last name (by which I mean, the way you would refer to him in a formal situation like a citation) is "'t Hooft" — yes, that starts with an apostrophe and a lower-case T. However, like many names which have a prefix, it is properly alphabetized under "H", not "t" or "'". This is an example of why linguistic tagging is often necessary, not just nice-to-have. A Dutch author "van Dijk" should be sorted under D, but an American (or, perhaps, Belgian) author "Van Dyke" should be sorted under V. The same is traditionally true of Scottish names starting with Mc/Mac, as I understand it. The rigid FIRSTNAME LASTNAME model of human names breaks down in very, very many places.

by cpdean 6y ago

nocturnial 6y ago

Why was it odd to be a surname? Maybe I'm wrong, but when translated it's more probable to be a surname than anything else.

adrianmonk 6y ago
One thing that threw me off is that sometimes people artificially construct names or modified forms of names. For example, "k8e" is an alternative form of "Katie". Not being familiar with this surname, the first thing I noticed was that "ten" and "ever" are both English words. So I tried reading it as "ten oh ever" or "ten zero ever". I couldn't understand what that would mean, but it was the best interpretation I could think of. In my experience, smart people are more likely to be idiosyncratic, so I wasn't inclined to dismiss the possibility. I tried putting "tenOever" into Google, but the first two pages of results just take me back to him and his research. I tried Wikipedia too and search results there were also dominated by his work. It wasn't until I came to the comments here that I was able to find the real answer.

elric 6y ago

The capitalization is a bit odd, but it's not an uncommon Dutch surname. Usually spelled in two words: "Ten Oever". That would probably be "Banks" in English, as in a river bank. While I'm on the subject, the Dutch (as in the nationality, not the language) are a bit unusual when it comes to surnames. It's common to capitalize every word in a name in many parts of the world, but the Dutch usually don't capitalize words like "ten" or "van" ("from", "of"), which can make for weirdly capitalized names like "Jan ten Oever". Were the same person to live in Belgium, the same Dutch name would become "Jan Ten Oever".

jonny_eh 6y ago
https://www.legacytree.com/blog/dutch-surnames https://www.legacytree.com/blog/dutch-surnames
ta1234567890 6y ago
Very interesting. Same happens with some Spanish names, for example "del Rio" ("of the River"), "del" is a conjunction of "de" and "el" ("of" and "the"). But most people have accepted their names being "wrongly" capitalized - in the example "Del Rio".
wiml 6y ago
My favorite example of this is the famous physicist Gerard 't Hooft. His last name (by which I mean, the way you would refer to him in a formal situation like a citation) is "'t Hooft" — yes, that starts with an apostrophe and a lower-case T. However, like many names which have a prefix, it is properly alphabetized under "H", not "t" or "'". This is an example of why linguistic tagging is often necessary, not just nice-to-have. A Dutch author "van Dijk" should be sorted under D, but an American (or, perhaps, Belgian) author "Van Dyke" should be sorted under V. The same is traditionally true of Scottish names starting with Mc/Mac, as I understand it. The rigid FIRSTNAME LASTNAME model of human names breaks down in very, very many places.