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When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

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Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#11
post #5

Looking at > He immediately gets angry at Facebook messing up his name. The company changes his name to ‘Hans De Zwart’, with a capitalized D. A small annoyance, but for De Zwart it signifies something bigger: “It is the arrogance of a giant American corporation which considers the correct spelling of the names of millions of Dutch people an edge case.” I am really confused. I am assuming the correct spelling is "de…

"Hans de Zwart" would be correct in Dutch yes. In English it'd be similar to "Hans the Black"

We also have variants that we insert between first and lastname: 'van' (from), 'van de' (from the), and many others.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#12

Isn't it a similar situation with Twitter blue ticks now? You have to know someone at Twitter to get them?

What does that have to do with the article?

The significant section on the author struggling to contact Facebook?

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#14
post #8
post #5

Looking at > He immediately gets angry at Facebook messing up his name. The company changes his name to ‘Hans De Zwart’, with a capitalized D. A small annoyance, but for De Zwart it signifies something bigger: “It is the arrogance of a giant American corporation which considers the correct spelling of the names of millions of Dutch people an edge case.” I am really confused. I am assuming the correct spelling is "de…

I was under the same impression, until I reached the end of the article and noticed first the return to "de", and second that the author is de Zwart himself

> This article was written by Reinier Kist and originally appeared in Dutch in NRC on August 3rd, 2020. It was translated into English by Hans de Zwart.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#15
Facebook is trying to administer a 2 billion member virtual city with about 20k people.

Most of the fires that start and actual administration details are just conveniently left to real world politicians, bureaucracies, journos, school boards, parents and police depts to work out.

This retarded unsustainable model has been sold as the magic of Scale.

Scaling user base = Scaling up issues. No free lunch.

Regulators can be asking a simple question - how many people are needed to administrate a 2 billion member city? How many does Facebook have to do the job. And if they dont have enough how to charge them for all the resource/energy drainage they offload to the real world.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#17
post #8
post #5

Looking at > He immediately gets angry at Facebook messing up his name. The company changes his name to ‘Hans De Zwart’, with a capitalized D. A small annoyance, but for De Zwart it signifies something bigger: “It is the arrogance of a giant American corporation which considers the correct spelling of the names of millions of Dutch people an edge case.” I am really confused. I am assuming the correct spelling is "de…

I was under the same impression, until I reached the end of the article and noticed first the return to "de", and second that the author is de Zwart himself

If you're referring to him by his last name, it'd be De Zwart. If you're referring to him by his full name, it'd be Hans de Zwart.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#19
post #5

Looking at > He immediately gets angry at Facebook messing up his name. The company changes his name to ‘Hans De Zwart’, with a capitalized D. A small annoyance, but for De Zwart it signifies something bigger: “It is the arrogance of a giant American corporation which considers the correct spelling of the names of millions of Dutch people an edge case.” I am really confused. I am assuming the correct spelling is "de…

The way it's used in the article is correct. His full name is "Hans de Zwart", but if you want to refer to him by just his last name, you always capitalize the tussenvoegsel: "De Zwart".

I did notice the juxtaposition in the paragraph there, but everything is correctly written here.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#20
post #5

Looking at > He immediately gets angry at Facebook messing up his name. The company changes his name to ‘Hans De Zwart’, with a capitalized D. A small annoyance, but for De Zwart it signifies something bigger: “It is the arrogance of a giant American corporation which considers the correct spelling of the names of millions of Dutch people an edge case.” I am really confused. I am assuming the correct spelling is "de…

It was actually translated into English by De Zwart himself. I believe that proper capitalisation of Dutch names with 'de' is to keep the 'd' lowercase if stating the full name (Hans de Zwart), but to capitalise the 'd' if stating just the last name (De Zwart), which the article seems to do consistently (except when quoting Facebook's mangling of the name).

In this context, Dutch refers to the country The Netherlands, not the language.

Based on my non-linguist opinion, I would say you're correct. Dutch people tend to not capitalise their Ds in surnames. When only mentioning the surname, it is treated as a mini-sentence, hence the capitalisaiton.

In northern Belgium (AKA Flanders), Dutch speakers tend to capitalise their Ds in surnames, so you would see "De Zwart" regardless of where it appears in the sentence. In case you're wondering: yes, there are quite a few surnames that exist both in The Netherlands with "de" and in Belgium with "De". The same goes for "van" (of) and "vander/van der" (of the), for instance.

Then again, if they're nobility, they might not capitalise the "de" because it might be the French "of" as opposed to the Dutch "de", meaning "the". Confusing stuff.

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