Talk:De Geer

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The family "De Geer" has played an important role in Swedish history since the 16th century, mainly centered around the iron foundry company town Finspång, but often extending to science, art and national politics. Older Swedish encyclopedias have had the bad habit to "standardize" the spelling of their forenames to "Karl", "Vilhelm" and "Gerhard". However, it seems that the persons themselves have most often used the spelling Carl (or Charles), Wilhelm and Gerard. Newer Swedish encyclopedias respect this, and this is also the trend in the Swedish Wikipedia. However, some biographies have been copied from an older out-of-copyright encyclopedia, and might use the wrong spelling. On the talk page sv:Diskussion:De Geer, I have compiled a list of what I believe to be the most correct and suitable spelling of each person's name for the Swedish Wikipedia. All Swedish encyclopedias (old and new) use the French spelling Louis, not the German/Swedish Ludwig/Ludvig or the Dutch Lodewijk. For surnames with a preposition, the general Swedish rule is to write the preposition in lower case and put it at the end of the forenames in alphabetic sorting, e.g. "Rosen, Eric von" and "Laval, Gustaf de". However, "De Geer" is one of very few exceptions where "De" is spelled with a capital D and this letter is used for sorting, e.g.: "De Geer, Louis". One branch (af Leufsta) of the Swedish family use a lower case "d", but are still sorted under "D", e.g. "de Geer, Jan". --LA2 22:36, August 21, 2005 (UTC)