Hendrik van Rooyen schreef: > "Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >> In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Hendrik van >> Rooyen wrote: >> >>> "Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> >>> 8<-------------------------------------------------------- >>> >>>> I wonder if we need another "middle" field for holding the "bin/binte" >>>> part (could also hold, e.g. "Van" for those names that use this). >>> NOOOOO! - I think of my surname as "van Rooyen" - its only a string with a >>> space in it - and its peculiar in that the first letter is not >>> capitalised.... >>> >>> And I am sure that the people called "von Kardorff" would not agree >>> either... >> So do the Dutch phone books have a lot of entries under V, then? >> >> It just seems less efficient to me, that's all. > > Don't know about what happens in Holland - my ancestors came over here to > South > Africa a long time ago - > a mixed up kid I am - Dutch and French from the time of the revocation of the > edict of Nantes... > And yes, here the phone books are sorted that way - the "van Rensburg"s > precede > the "van Rooyen"s. And what is worse, there are a lot of "van der"s too - two > spaces in the string like "van der Merwe" who are preceded by "van der Bank" > - > "van" basically means "from" - like the German "von" - but in Germany its an > appellation applied to the nobility - and in my name it makes no sense as > "Rooyen" is not a place - its a strange archaic derivative of the colour red - > "rooij' in Dutch, spelt "rooi" in Afrikaans - and the "der" is an archaic form > of "the" - (and modern "the" in German, if yer male) ...
It's the same here in Belgium. Except that our Van is with a capital V in most cases; if it's a lower v it either indicates nobility or a Dutch name. I don't see it as a problem. I prefer having Van Straeten and Van Stralen next to each other than having them mixed up with names without Van like this: Straeten, Van Straetmans Stralen, Van For me the string as a whole is the name; the parts separated don't have much meaning. -- If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants. -- Isaac Newton Roel Schroeven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
