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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, a
by 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 agohttps://www.legacytree.com/blog/dutch-surnames https://www.legacytree.com/blog/dutch-surnames
- ta1234567890 6y agoVery 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 agoMy 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.