Talk:Mona Islands

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[edit] Mona Islands or Mohn Islands?

Despite my unfortunately limited knowledge of Russian, I am usually able to discern where the name of an Island group came from. But I was not successful at all with the Mona Islands. I cannot figure out where that name came from. I assume it is a woman's name. I would be thankful for your help.Mohonu 07:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi there, Mohunu! I did some research, and you know what's funny? Most of the articles in Russian Google refer to Mona, Puerto Rico, an island in the Carribbean :). Your guess about Mona being a female name was a bit off course, although there is such a name. My guess would be that the island is named after some gentleman, whose last name was Mon (Mona is a genetive case, meaning "island of Mon"). Now we have to find out who that Mon was. I enjoy reading your articles about the Kara Sea islands, so keep up the good work and let me know if you need any help! Take care. KNewman 17:21, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I got it! Here's what I found: "HENRIK MOHN (1835-1916), Norwegian meteorologist, was born at Bergen May 15 1835, his family being of German origin. He was educated at the Cathedral school, Bergen, and afterwards entered the university of Christiania, where he took his doctor's degree in 1852. In 1861 he became an observer at the Christiania observatory, in 1866 was elected professor of meteor- ology at Christiania University, and in 1866 was appointed. director of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, which he was largely instrumental in founding. He retained this post until 1913. Mohn's meteorological researches were of the highest: importance. His Etudes sur les mouvements de l'atmosphere, written in collaboration with the mathematician Goldberg (1876-8), is a work of great value for the study of the dynamics of the atmosphere, and the authors continued their researches on the subject in various papers contributed to the Zeitschrift der Oest. Meteor. Gesell. (1877-8). Mohn did much work on the subject of storms, publishing storm maps of the Atlantic (1870-1;1, and he also carried out researches (1876-8) on the meteorology and oceanography of the northern Atlantic. He worked ou t and published the meteorological observations of various polar expeditions, including those of Nansen in the " Fram " (1893-6), the second " Fram " expedition (1898-1902), and Amundsen's south polar journey (1910-2), some of his papers appearing as supplements to Petermann's Mitteilungen. He also published many articles on the climate of Norway and conducted investigations into the use of the hypsometer, which are of great importance for the study of the physics of the earth. Besides the works mentioned above, he produced Grundziige der Meteorologic, which has gone through numerous enlarged editions since its first appearance in 1872 as a small text-book. Mohn was a member of many foreign scientific societies, and was senior hon. member of the Royal Meteorological Society of London, having been elected in 1874. He died at Christiania Sept. 12 1916."

This comes from 1911 Britannica, so it's weird we don't have an article on this gentleman. So this is the guy the island is named after. Too bad the article doesn't say who named the island after him. It's gotta be the Russians :). KNewman 17:35, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Me again :). There's an article about Henrik Mohn in Norwegian Wikipedia, if that helps you any. KNewman 17:43, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Good find! It was surely the Norwegian Nansen who named the islands. Here's an article by Nansen using the spelling "Mohn's Islands" in the Geographical Journal (1897): [1], see second page. --Reuben 17:39, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

And I guess we have to rename the article into Mohn Islands, since they're named after Henrik Mohn. KNewman 16:53, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I also thought about renaming the article "Mohn Islands", but the problem is that this name became obsolete long ago (before WW2) and is not used anymore on maps or lists of radio hits or even Russian maps in English [2], which are most often used as a source. So, as long as I don't find proof that the other name is in use, it is better to leave it as Mona Islands. A similar, but not identical, situation arises for Geiberg Islands, almost all maps refer to the Russian group as "Geiberg", while they keep the name Heiberg (or Axel Heiberg) Islands for the Canadian Islands.Mohonu 14:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)