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Because Vincent van Gogh was Dutch. In the Netherlands (and Flanders, I presume) "van" would be lowercased when placed between given name and surname (because i
by vanderZwan 3y ago
Because Vincent van Gogh was Dutch. In the Netherlands (and Flanders, I presume) "van" would be lowercased when placed between given name and surname (because it's not a name, "van" just means "of"), but capitalized when it stands alone with the surname:
Vincent van Gogh
Van Gogh
And to pre-emptively answer the next question: we don't drop the "van" because some surnames come in varieties with and without it, so you might end up confusing a hypothetical "Jan van Gent" with "Jan Gent".
But of course, you can't tell from an article if someone is Dutch or just has Dutch ancestry but long-since switched to English spelling rules. Which in some cases means the family chose to always lowercase the "van".
Source: look at my username ;)
- skerit 3y agoWe don't do that in Flanders. My husband's name is "Roel Van Gils". People (and computer systems) from the Netherlands do automatically change this to "Roel van Gils" but they are wrong. Also, in Flanders, when you do write the "Van" or the "De" in your lastname with a lowercase letter, we assume you are nobility
- vanderZwan 3y agoThank you for educating me! :) It also immediately highlights the original problem even better. Funny how the French do the same thing as us (Dutch people) again though, I wonder if there is a quirky consequence of some historical event "encoded" there?
- mytailorisrich 3y agoIt's the same in French ('de' is lowercase) though many people get that rule wrong.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoIt took me a while to realize that "Van Morrison" wasn't the musician's surname.