Talk:Chaim Herzog

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Where was he born? I've found websites claiming him for Cork, Dublin and Belfast. Does anyone know for sure?

Seabhcan 22:48, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • Please post the various links you found and I'll look into it more. Thanks! Jewbacca 22:57, Jul 4, 2004 (UTC)
    • I have a link here [1] that says "The Irish Jewish Museum in Dublin was founded in 1985 and opened by Dublin born Chaim Herzog, then president of Israel." --Irishpunktom\talk
  • He was, actually, born in Belfast. However the family moved to Dublin a few months later. Many, erroneously, believed that he was born in Dublin. To say that he was born in the UK is misleading. --ClemMcGann 09:25, 27

May 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Ireland

Some Jews who entered Ireland during the war years were granted citizenship in 1946, including Rabbi David Freilich, who had been living with the Herzog family. see [2]. (The dates given for entering Ireland may be unreliable)--ClemMcGann 09:55, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vivian Herzog

Is this the same person as Vivian Herzog, who served as intelligence officer in the Haganah in 1948? If so, this name should be mentioned in the article.

I have changed the part which says he was born in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland did not exist in 1918.

Chaim Herzog and Vivian Herzog were the same person (source: Dominique Lapierre's O Jerusalem) He was given both names at birth but was refered to largely as Vivian Herzog until 1956 (Ergo, still called Vivian during his Haganah days). While he was called Chaim Herzog in Israel, he continued to let himself be addressed as Vivian Herzog by people, especially English journalists

Chaim Herzog was born on the Cliftonville Road in Belfast in 1918 where his father Dr.Isaac Herzog was a Rabbi. A small plaque adorns the house in which he spent his early childhood. See http://www.ulsterhistory.co.uk/chaimherzog.htm

[edit] Chaim vs. Haim

User:Number 57 recently moved this from Chaim to Haim, citing a passing mention in an article on .gov.il as evidence that it's the official transliteration. However, Chaim is a far more common transliteration, in both official and unofficial contexts. It's the one used in his biography on the official site of the Presidency, for example, and by most English news sources. A quick google search of .gov.il shows 226 mentions of "Chaim Herzog" versus 41 of "Haim Herzog". Therefore, I'd propose moving this back. --Delirium 05:50, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I can give you two good reasons not to:
  1. To make Wikipedia consistent - it is stupid to have some people with the Hebrew name חיים transliterated as "Chaim" and some as "Haim". Seeing as the latter is definitely winning these days (all but one of the "Chaims" on the Chaim page are deceased whilst most of the "Haims" mentioned on Haim are living people), Haim should be the standard.
  2. More importantly, "Haim" is the correct transliteration of the name. The "ch" transliteration of ח (Hebrew letter Het - note also beginning with "h" rather than "ch") was most likely developed by Yiddish/German speakers (Ben-Yehuda himself was a Yiddish speaker), as for them it is correct, as "ch" in German (as in Ich) has the same sound as Het (this is probably also why "Chaim" seems to be used for older people's names rather than younger ones as these days more Israelis speak English than Yiddish/German). However, as I'm sure you're aware, there is no equivalent in English (ch being used for words like Church), and therefore we use "h" at the start of a word or "kh" in the centre/end. Also, the article on Hebrew transliteration shows the primary (academic and ISO) transliterations to be "h" rather than "ch" which is a secondary Israeli transliteration). It also points out in the footnotes of the table that "h" is used when ח is the initial letter. Lastly, the letter H is the actually direct descendent of ח (well, its Phoenician cousin, but it's effectively the same alphabet) via the Greek letter Eta).
I admit it was a mistake to cite the Knesset website, as it can be seen to be highly inconsistent (even with different spellings of the name on the same page [3]). Nevertheless, the fact that something has been transliterated wrongly more often than correctly does not make it right.
Number 57 11:42, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
That seems to be somewhat at odds with our "use common names" policy, though. FWIW, the ch/h issue also exists in modern Greek—'ch' is the historical transliteration (developed by Germans), while 'h' is the correct modern transliteration, but we still have Chalcidice there instead of at Halkidiki and so on, though we do use the 'h' for a few names that have no historical usage. Which is inconsistent, but the least surprising for a speaker of English used to seeing whatever name is most common for the particular person/thing in question. I don't feel too strongly on the matter, but using the less common transliteration for a historical figure does seem odd. --Delirium 19:03, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
The president was an English speaker and he wrote his name Chaim. None of you have the right to change that because you want uniform transliteration on Wikipedia! Unbelievable, that this should even be an issue. --Gilabrand 05:30, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
I think the photo is too large and in-your-face. Does anyone know how to resize photos in an infobox?--Gilabrand 05:35, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
President Herzog (born in Belfast, native English speaker!) indeed spelled his name Chaim. See the cover of his autobiography in Amazon here [4] The page should be moved back to Chaim Herzog. --Derwig 08:49, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] resize photo

The photo is far too big. Does anyone know how to resize a photo in an infobox?--Gilabrand 05:17, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Just do [[Image:XXX.jpg|200px]] to get the correct size (200 being an example). Number 57 16:37, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I tried it, but it doesn't come out right. You see wording sticking out behind the picture.--Gilabrand 17:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Where did the photo go? Epson291 (talk) 10:24, 19 May 2008 (UTC)