Dick Petit wrote,
> I simply want to know how a Cuban would treat the name of Carlos de la
Torre today.  I do know that those who knew Dr. de la Torre  never spoke of
him as "Torre" but always as "de la Torre." By the same token I know of no
one who in conversation would refer to d'Orbigny as "Orbigny" instead of
"d'Orbigny."

De/della/du/van/von/van der, etc. mean "of (the)" or "from (the)" and in
most cases indicated landownership or nobility some centuries back. Ludwig
van Beethoven seems to be an exception, as his family was not noble. My best
guess is that democratically inclined librarians, intent on leveling social
distinctions, decided to shift names such as d'Orbigny to Orbigny, d'. This
would explain why the U.S. Geological Survey's style manual tells us to
alphabetize (non-aristocratic) Dutch names such as "van Tassel" under V, but
(aristocratic) German names such as "van Sternberg" under S. Most Europeans
are perplexed by the complexity of this practice, even those in former
Soviet countries, though they also alphabetize such names as if the "van"
were not there. The telephone company will alphabetize your name where you
tell it to, V or S as you please.

Rindsberg is not a noble name, but I was entertained to find that if you
search for it under Google Image, you will find a lot of pictures of little
pedigreed dogs named Tina, Lisa, or Justin "vom Rindsberg" after a mountain
in southwest Germany. It's also the type locality for a rare phosphate
mineral. Before the Web, I could have lived my whole life without learning
that.

Cheers,
Andrew

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Tuscaloosa, Alabama

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