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Are “Alexandroff” and “Alexandrov” actually different names? I thought they were just different English transliterations of the same name. Certainly we don’t want to confuse two different mathematical concepts, or two different people, but we aren’t alone in spelling the general topologist’s name also “Alexandrov”:
note inconsistencies in the spelling of speciali(s/z)ation
Yes. One is according to British English, the other to American English. An informal practice at the nLab is that page titles use American English spellings, but otherwise different spelling conventions are tolerated here, even within the same page.
If references to the differential-geometric spaces are still there on the specialization order page, that indeed is an error which should be corrected.
To add some further detail: even within British English, there is variation. The Oxford English Dictionary prefers -ize to -ise, for example, as do I.
The discussion that went with edits to the entry in question is here.
I’ll add a disambiguation remark now and split of the references on the differential geometric notion.
Okay, see the top of specialization topology for an attempt at disambiguation.
I have created a new stub entry Alexandrov space (in differential geometry) and moved the four relevant references to there.
I have also created “category: people”-entries
and added relevant links to Wikipedia-entries there. Please check.
I changed Paul to Pavel Alexandrov. While spelling Paul is sometimes used in German, for his name I have never seen it neither in English nor in Russian, and I read total of several volumes of his memoirs, memoirs of others about him, his books and his original papers. I also adapted the other name to English wikipedia spelling.
Edit: changed to Pavel Aleksandrov.
German spelling Paul Alexandroff (Edit: Pawel Alexandroff) or English Pavel Alexandrov/Aleksandrov but not Paul Alexandrov. I never seen that combination, it must be rare. I find the transliteration scheme of AMS less relevant than the transliteration scheme used for English by Russian libraries and for Russian journals in versions in Russian. Aleksandrov spent much time in Goettingen, studying with Emmy Noether and some preference for German rather than English was clear. (BTW, In those times one would NEVER leave out the patronimic, i.e. the middle name. Even his nickname was Pus, what is from the initials.)
The largest collection of data and articles in Russian mathematics is math-net.ru They have for each mathematician both English and Russian page. See there for statistics of how many pages have which spelling and you will see a completely different statistics than Mike quotes above: Pavel is so dominant transliteration and even more in biography materials on Aleksandrov’s school (among my favorite literature 20 years ago). Mathscinet has also many with spelling Pavel Aleksandrov, see here, which I also personally prefer. Personally I do not care what Pavel’s intention was at the time, the modern transliterations are somewhat better and somewhat more regular than those in those times< and his education was biased toward French and German as it was in general for Russians of early 20th century. The Russian itself spelled quite different during carism, at the time when he went to grammar school.
I do not defend spelling “Alexandrov” as I myself in my own writing always use Aleksandrov, but in the nLab I yield to the English Wikipedia spelling which is Alexandrov, so I yielded to it hastily in the Lab, against my habits to use Alexandrov and not my own preferred Aleksandrov (of course when citing publications one does not transliterate between Latin and Latin; in Lab I put pain for many references in Russian to give also the original cyrillic citation; I did not see other contributors of Lab sacrificing time for this, but Toby does for cyrillic redirects for some person entries). Paul Alexandroff is the name he used in his early career publications as you said.
I did not say that MathSciNet is having less publications than math-net.ru but that I trust librarians in Moscow more than AMS. Both have Pavel in far more publications than Paul.
Being in Germany in early career he changed the spelling to Alexandroff as his first transliteration to any variant of Latinic. It is customary that people once they have a Latinic spelling use the same in all languages. On the other hand, the general public perceives the people from earlier times, especially 19th century and before by different transliterations in every language. Thus if somebody is a famous person then people will use their own transliteration scheme and take it directly from the original, Russian and not from the papers. Thus the English and German wikipedia for mosty historical persons from Russia have DIFFERENT spelling, though I am sure that all of those themselves did not use more than one spelling in Latinic scripts. Nobody is intersted in how Lenin or Stalin spelled their name in Latin, people use the translitarations which are customary in their languages. For Slavic linguistics the diacritics are used, like in the standard monograph “The history of Slavic”, but mathematicians use it more rarely, and they are used in some journals with Russian and English versions.
I did not know that the AMS scheme agrees with my own usage, sorry.
I hope
I find it appalling that many people seem to think that they are entitled to transliterate Russian names into English in whatever way pleases them
was not directed at me; I never said anything of the sort. My question was just to clear up a point that was unclear to me after reading Dmitri’s first comment.
I personally do not feel qualified to have an opinion on what we “should” do in this situation.
I find it appalling that many people seem to think that they are entitled to transliterate Russian names into English in whatever way pleases them, completely ignoring author’s own preferences and creating additional confusion.
Think whatever you want. I spent few years of study studying comparative linguistics and follow in my own work the standard transliteration in Slavic linguistics. In most cases it agrees with transliterations into Czech, Slovak, Slovenian and Croatian. I made a compromise to Alexandrov from Aleksandrov folowing English Wikipedia (is it appalling to follow Wikipedia ?). Most Russian historical names in history are transliterated not according to the publications of the authors but according to the particular habits in each nation separately (by habit it may mean that it is sometimes different as sometimes the name became known through an intermediary third language), though those people used just one spelling. Librarians use the spelling which transliterates according to the rules which can usually reversed for precision. So the author names in Russian papers are transliterated as Gel’fand, though once he settled in the West he started spelling in the new publications as Gelfand, for simplicity. I have been careful in Lab that in one publication I spell Ginsburg, while in all others by Ginzburg, because V. Ginzburg has done it that way. I spell my name in English either Škoda or Skoda, depends on circumstances, weather the precision or simplicity is more important.
The author’s opinion is the most important in the question of original pronunciation, less in the question of transliteration, but has to be absolutely followed when quoting the bibliography in language which does not transliterate further. I see no offense in those simple rules.
So the issue is very complicated and far from “whatever way pleases them”.
Thank you for pointing out about two different notions of Alexandroff/Aleksandrov spaces vs. Alexandrov spaces. I personally do not care about mathematician Alexander Alexandrov, the topic of my extensive student readings was the biography and opus of P.S. only.
I do not know how to correct specialization topology (unless in future once I have time to work on this seriously) for errors which I contributed to. I added few references to have at hand which looked (according to the authors and so on) serious plus MO entries which are always helpful with different viewpoints; I often help others who write new entries and write too few references, this time it was counterproductive: I myself had no interest in the topic. I was not aware that there are two different topics (in Russian one has only Aleksandrov I guess in all cases, so the confusion must be bigger, it has nothing to do with spelling, but with mathematics). Of course, ideally one would havetwo entries, for two notions and not throw the references but to distribute them among the two. I have no time this week to carefully do that, so let it stay for a while. I will write a warning there.
By the way, do you pronounce Nakayama lemma as nakayama or nakiyama ? The proper is second because he is from the North of Japan. I did not know about Eilenberg-MacLane spaces, and I would guess that the difference will go away with time, via hypercorrection (as some English speakers kindly pronounce t in often though the sound never existed there historically). For another case, notice that the influential D. B. Fuks’s book on Lie algebra cohomology has been translated into English interchanging the role of rather different Weil algebras vs. Weyl algebras. Books should be checked as they are final publications much more than Lab which will be for long time in a transitory state, even in main entries.
Non-Russian papers use exclusively the spelling Paul Alexandroff, Russian papers and translations of Russian paper use the spelling Pavel Aleksandrov, as required by the AMS transliteration scheme. What is your point?
The papers on the person and biographical entries which I read used Pavel S. Aleksandrov, not Paul. I did not have any intention to change the bibliographic entries (there are none in his entry so far anyway, and they were not the topic of the discussion; they do not transliterate anyway), but to follow the common spelling for the biography.
Besides, you missed my point completely.
I did not, I just had no time to talk about that, I was still editing the above entry to which you answered before the final version. I did study the entry but wanted to help those who did with providing few links. As some used the English-looking spelling I also changed the spelling. See above.
As you can see, the mathematical community makes a clear distinction between these two terms
Right, including I guess the Russian mathematical community, where there is no spelling difference. Sorry that I was not interested in those mathematical theories, but just tried to do the service to Lab colleagues who were interested in it and started the entry.
Unfortunately, the collected works of P.S. which I own and partly read are all in Russian, so I was not used to P.S.-s habits of style in non-Russian. Later biographical works in English which I read were written more recently.
First, he didn’t change the spelling.
By change, I mean and meant a change from cyrillic. That is why I wrote “as his first transliteration to any variant of Latinic”. This change I meant as a first change. Urysohn and Aleksandrov together spent parts of those years in Germany and France (where Urysohn drowned when swimming, if my memory is right, I learned that from Aleksandrov’s article).
When a Russian word ends in “ov”, the v is actually pronounced as f.
Indeed, in German, “v” is always pronounced /f/, so that’s one language where using “ff” is not needed.
Israel Gelfand always wrote his name as Israel Gelfand in his non-Russian papers
As long as he was in Russia, loosing the letter from Russian alphabet, would mean that the name can not be reconstructed back. Notice that it is the same with my own name, Škoda. So as long as he was using cyrillic, the translations not only of Russian papers, but anything from Russian context about him would follow the Gel’fand spelling. There are many people who live in two different communities and come with different names in those, even radically different. Having his publications in English in 1938 being simple Gelfand, does not mean that the descriptions of his data as a Soviet citizen should be truncated, and many mathematicians tried hard in many references to reflect the Gel’fand as a Soviet citizen’s name in that form.
Note, however, that we are discussing a specific term (Alexandroff space)
Did I ever complain about it ? I was not aware of it until you wrote number 1 above and can not say anything about that topic I know nothing about. I was discussing the entry Pavel Aleksandrov which I was intervening today. I was not discussing the Alexandroff space where I made a mistake some time ago.
Toby: “Indeed, in German, “v” is always pronounced /f/, so that’s one language where using “ff” is not needed.”
Toby, Russians of that period were better educated in French and German and Aleksandrov was spending some time in 1920s in both countries. I do not see that as two different periods; German is not oppposed to French here, but French and German together to English. English culture was likely further from him at that time was a little further, that is my impression from the memoirs I read. He might have been very well read in English and spending much time on English culture at the time, but I do not recall that described in his memoirs.
scientific terminology should use the same spelling that is used by the author in the paper that contains the relevant definition
Usually the name is given to a wrong author, and even that is usually not corrected. So this is usually too optimistic, while a wise warning.
21 So what about P. S. A. spaces ? They have no name attached to in Russian ?
Post Scriptum. I had no dinner this evening thanks to this discussion. Now I have to leave, as the last bus is coming.
the mathematical community makes a clear distinction between these two terms,
This certainly seems to be a convenient way to distinguish these concepts when using Latin script.
the mathematical community makes a clear distinction between these two terms,
This certainly seems to be a convenient way to distinguish these concepts when using Latin script.
Maybe it also serves as an example of what some take as a general rule: it is not wise to name concepts after people. Better give concepts a descriptive name.
but I still have to point out that the statement
also spelled in German Pawel Alexandrof, Alexandroff used in all his own early articles in foreign languages
is not quite correct, as I already pointed above
Yes, I left out “Pawel” there from the German wikipedia taking it as a German authority, now I corrected that, see Pavel Aleksandrov weather you are happy. You could have corrected yourself.
By the way, do you pronounce Nakayama lemma as nakayama or nakiyama ? The proper is second because he is from the North of Japan.
Huh? Wikipedia says that Tadashi Nakayama (中山 正) was born in Tokyo, and Tokyo isn’t really north so much as it is east. As for ‘nakiyama’, I’d like a citation for that too.
Takayama was born in Tokyo, while his family is not originating from Tokyo region, but from Northern Japan. I was similarly born in Zagreb, but I did not live in my childhood in Zagreb at all, nor my parents lived in Zagreb in the year when I was born. I learned about the pronunciation of Nakayama from some algebraist’s lecture about 10 years ago or so, while in the United States; after I learned it once, I heard it independently later few times. Once I explained this to a Japanese-American mathematician, she told me that she wondered before why she heard so many times nakiyama in practice, contrary to the spelling, and she finally got the explanation. I do not know any related citation nor if it has anything to do with a skying place Nakiyama. The available obituary of Nakayama does not comment on the issue.
common mistakes like Gelfand-Neumark theorem (correct) versus Gelfand-Naimark theorem (incorrect)
I called it Gelfand-Neumark until 10 years ago (I do not recall my reasoning, I just learned it that way originally) when I yield to a now “standard usage”.
The language can be more or less logical, with a memory to cultural and historical details it can record. Ideally, authors can make a difference by exemplifying their usage which sometimes is out of mainstream but well-thought. However, eventually the “correct” stands for the accepted usage in some language, even if it is historically or logically incorrect or it came up as a result of a revisionism.
The school example of this is plural of English “syllabus”. One hears both “syllabuses” and “syllabi”, the first by the English rules, and the second by (falsely!!) remembering the Latin rule, like plurals emeriti and alumni. But, while emeritus and alumnus are from the 2nd (i-) declension, syllabus is from the 4th (u-) declension so in English the rendering for the plural would be also “syllabus” following Latin correct N. pl. syllabūs (similarly status is also in 4th declension, and fortunately, it was not hypercorrected). But if one writes syllabus for the plural, most academics will say that it is incorrect, though it is eventually correct! Even the linguists with classics background will not use it. I prefer “syllabuses” to reflect the fact that the English memory of proper Latin declension here does not exist, while syllabi is just a folk-etymological hypercorrection, so it is worthless. But, it is unfortunately pretty standard in academic circles of the present and hence considered correct, despite the wrong history. Site oxforddictionraries, syllabus says that both plurals are OK in present English and says for syllabi “like the original Latin” what is a crude misinformation. I do not have access to OED now. Wikipedia unfortunately does not touch on the issue, but quotes both plurals assuming it seems that we are dealing with the 2nd declension nouns.
’Octopus’ is another of those nouns ending in -us which many people mistakenly believe should pluralize with an -i. This time the word isn’t even of Latin origin; it’s a Latinization of an ancient Greek word. The original plural, which hardly anyone uses anymore, is actually octopodes (omitting here any diacritical marks). I imagine Zoran might agree with me that ’octopuses’ is an acceptable way to pluralize the English word.
On the subject of Gelfand-Neumark: I only learned about that recently (through Dmitri Pavlov, no less, who commented over at MO). I am happy to call it this in the nLab, as opposed to Gelfand-Naimark, but in a talk, and depending on the audience, I would probably go with whatever usage I thought would be more familiar (which in the USA, would generally be Gelfand-Naimark, I think). Depending on the situation, I might add a comment on what I recently learned, or I might not. (I assume ’Neumark’ here would be given a German pronunciation?)
This type of situation comes up a lot, of course. For example, in casual conversation, I might avoid giving a French pronunciation to ’pince-nez’, simply because the chances of not being understood (this is again in the USA where I live) would be pretty high, and it might come off sounding affected.
Depending on the dialect of German (and I don’t know if that applies here), “Neumark” and “Naimark” might be pronounced the same (more like how the latter is usually pronounced).
I despise hypercorrections, so I will take care never to say “syllabi”. Another word along these lines is “virus”, which was a mass noun in Latin and so had no plural, but is still fourth declension (at least probably, apparently it was rare and so it’s hard to tell for certain); the silliest people write “virii”, but “viri” is also badly wrong, since it is a Latin plural, but of “vir” instead.
I am inclining towards avoiding classical plurals altogether (so “toposes” instead of “topoi”), just to avoid the risks of accidentally using a hypercorrection! On the other hand, I admit past hypercorrections to orthography alone (such as the “s” in “island”, which is unrelated to “isle”); still, I resist changing spelling as much as I can (hence “colour”, “realise”, etc, despite living my entire life in the U.S.).
This thread is probably well off topic already, but...
... "virus", which was a mass noun in Latin and so had no plural, but is still fourth declension...
My Pocket Oxford Latin dictionary says that virus is 2nd declension neuter (so nom. pl. vira, gen. sg. viri), and can mean 'medicinal preparation' as well as 'poison'. ('Virii' has always got up my nose.)
A propos of 'realise', Tom mentioned in #4 that the OED prefers '-ize' where possible. Fowler (1926) does too, citing the Encyclopaedia Brittanica and The Times as well as the OED in his support.
Fowler's advice on pluralizing non-native words is worth remembering: use the original plural if the word retains its original sense, but use the English plural otherwise. I've always liked Johnstone's snarky jibe from the introduction to Topos Theory, when he asks 'those... who persist in talking about topoi whether, when they go out for a ramble on a cold day, they carry supplies of hot tea with them in thermoi.'
Drifting ever further off topic…
I resist changing spelling as much as I can (hence “colour”, “realise”, etc, despite living my entire life in the U.S.)
Of course, many words ending in -our (humour, colour, etc.) originally came from Latin and were spelled without a ’u’; the spelling changed at some point when they passed into French. The OED gives plenty of information on this which I won’t bother to record here, as well as on the matter of the suffix -ize/-ise (as Tom and Finn both mentioned).
Moving slightly less off topic, there's definitely something to be said for using what people are familiar with. Todd mentioned in #34 that when in the USA, he wouldn't give the French pronunciation to the loan word pince-nez, partly because he'd be less likely to be understood. Similarly, I occasionally come across people in the UK who insist on pronouncing "Van Gogh" in what they say is the authentic Dutch way (something like a cat coughing up a furball). This is terrible communication, because most of us will genuinely have no idea who they're talking about. (The standard British pronunciation, presumably hideously unfaithful, is "Van Goff".)
So I think that after a while has passed, it's better to simply go with the convention, however wrong it is. Most of the time we simply want to communicate efficiently. If you write "Gelfand-Neumark" and then explain that it's the same as what most people call "Gelfand-Naimark", that's a bit like referring to "Van Hhhhgrfhhh" and adding "that's who most of you call 'Van Goff'".
Of course it's a matter of degree: I certainly try to be correct about living mathematicians, and I might try to correct a standing convention if it came about through someone's contribution being suppressed for political reasons (e.g. if the Smith theorem should really be called the Smith-Jones theorem, but Jones was Jewish so didn't get the credit). But when it's a matter of mistaken transliteration, or different opinions on orthography, that doesn't motivate me enough to sacrifice clarity of communication.
As Urs says, the problem would be solved if we used descriptive names for theorems. I agree: I much prefer descriptive names. But I'd add that sometimes people's names essentially become descriptions in the end. For example, I don't know who the Taylor of Taylor's Theorem was, and to me the word "Taylor" in this part of mathematics simply means something like "power series expansion".
I think past some tipping point of usage, a word originally borrowed from a foreign language becomes an English word, and it is acceptable to pronounce and pluralize it in an English way. The inexcusable thing is, as others have said, to pluralize something as if it came from some language, or some declension within that language, that it didn’t actually. I was indoctrinated with this at a young age in the case of octopodes, but I don’t think I’d been told about ’syllabuses’ before.
I have to admit to not infrequently saying “topoi” myself, though. It just rolls off my tongue more easily, while “toposes” twists it up in knots. Maybe that makes me a bad person…
(The standard British pronunciation, presumably hideously unfaithful, is “Van Goff”.)
What about the “Van Go” version (leading to dreadful jokes)
(Sorry for perpetuating the off-topic topic)
Johnstone’s choice is toposes which he jokingly argumented that we do not say “thermoi” for plural of thermos (bottles). I use both toposes and topoi, just because I like it :) Croatian nowdays has more or less phonological script unlike in pr3evious centuries. If we were referring to classical Croat writes and poets by their inconsistent writings following Hungarian, Italian, German and other influences, we would be in mess with having combinations like cz, ch, tsch, c etc. all interchangeably and inconsistently for the two modern and phonological č and ć, for example. So most historical figures in Croatia, who have Croatian family names, are referred by the present orthography. Serbian scientist Milanković is also in Serbia spelled that way, despite the orthography he used in his publications in 19th century in the west.
Dmitri, I beg to differ: there can be confusion unless you explicitly put in that reference. When your post at MO popped up at the front page recently, I honestly didn’t know that Neumark and Naimark (I’m skipping diacritical marks – sorry) referred to the same person; I had to look it up. Hence my comment below the question.
A practical question then arises. Which is better in a talk, say to an American audience – to say Naimark and be done with it (but risk being corrected by someone who minds), or to go into the matter of Neumark/Naimark which may distract from the mathematics one is trying to get across? I think I would just say Naimark.
I still don’t have a definitive answer to my earlier question: are Neumark and Naimark pronounced differently?
note the prime and the breve accent, which are very important
While I could easily believe that ‘Gelfand’ is a Russian word or name that must be distinguished from ‘Gelʹfand’, I very much doubt this about ‘Naimark’. So unless you’re doing a computer match (in which case you really ought to be generous to catch dropped accents and other common misspellings by humans), I question the importance (but not the correctness) of the breve accent.
Which is better in a talk
I would probably write something like ‘the Gelfand–Neumark Theorem (otherwise known as the Gelʹfand–Naĭmark Theorem)’ in print (abbreviated to ‘Gelfand–Neumark (aka Gelʹfand–Naĭmark)’ on slides), and pronounce it in speech so that nobody could tell. (For print, note also the en dashes between the names; the rest of you are all using hyphens, although the difference is very subtle in the Forum’s default font. This is how you tell that Gelfand & Neumark, like Eilenberg & MacLane and Smith & Jones, are different people, while Burali-Forti is a single person.)
I question the importance (but not the correctness) of the breve accent.
The difference between i and ĭ in Russian is about identical to the one between i and y in English (like in yeah), or i and j in Croatian. It is a different letter with different pronunciation and typically corresponding to a phonemic value (though Russian writing is not phonological either), not a sign of some prosodic feature like stress or pitch. Like symplectic vs. simplicial. Would you mind that I talk symplicial and simplectyc ? Please let me know, dear Tobi, should we talk Englysh, Russyan or Croatyan yf you do not mind/care ?
While “Toby” is correct and “Tobi” is wrong, the difference is not important. As a matter of fact, I have gone by “Tobi” in the past; it is also the standard translation of my name into most western European languages. All the same, each name is used by somebody in English, whereas (I strongly suspect) nobody uses “Naimark” in Russian.
The difference between Russian “i” and “ĭ” is like the difference between English “i” and “y” after a vowel at the end of words, where the rule is (excepting a few foreign plurals like “topoi”) to always use “y”, and no confusion (only incorrectness) can result from doing it wrong.
If you were to write “Tobi” in a bibliography, I would call it a mistake, but not an important one. If you were to write “Tob”, that would be important; people would not be able to read it. If you were to write “Tony”, that would be serious.
Possibly we really only disagree about how important “important” is.
after a vowel at the end of words
No, this is not true. There are situations where both i and ĭ can theoretically stand; they are NOT in complementary distribution! Confusion can happen if not correctly used unlike what you claim. Also the pronunciation is different (vowel vs. glide).
поцелуй is singular of kiss, and поцелуи is plural, kisses!! So it is far not interchangeable.
Other examples of the standing in the same position is поимённо vs. пойми, обои vs. обойти
poimёnno but poĭmi
I knew about the plural at the end of words, and I meant to make a contrast with English at the end vs Russian not at the end (which did not write make it into my comment). But I didn’t know that “поимённо” was possible (and at first I wondered if it was foreign until I looked it up). So I stand corrected!
Since people seemed to agree, I made the Lab refer only to ‘Alexandroff’ topologies/spaces/locales (except on Alexandrov space and Aleksander Aleksandrov themselves, and on the link from specialization topology, since otherwise this concept is not wanted yet in the Lab).
Toby said:
I am inclining towards avoiding classical plurals altogether (so “toposes” instead of “topoi”), just to avoid the risks of accidentally using a hypercorrection! On the other hand, I admit past hypercorrections to orthography alone (such as the “s” in “island”, which is unrelated to “isle”); still, I resist changing spelling as much as I can (hence “colour”, “realise”, etc, despite living my entire life in the U.S.).
Yup, that’s because “topoi” is just about the worst word ever. I am throwing my vote to “toposes”.
“topoi” is just about the worst word ever
You think so? I can think of words I dislike much more. “Dandle”. And (pardon me) “jism”.
(And now back to our regularly scheduled program.)
Why would be about the worst word, Harry ? The intended spirit of Greek, though historically unnatural, and of philosophical setup of Greek academia, is nicely suggested by this choice. It serves as inspiration for many, and it has daughters in mathematics like cosmoi etc. Why would something what inspires many people be “the worst” ? This is a selfish statement I would say.
Zoran, sometimes I like to exaggerate =(.
I know, you can be rough sometimes there :)
in Yiddish eu is pronounced as /ay/
Well, /ay/ and /ai/ are different, but the only page which really uses IPA actually says /ai/, so that’s all right.
Interestingly enough, for some reason, the English original proceedings volume at Nice, has the article signed as M. A. Naimark:
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