Talk:Henry Bate of Mechelen

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Henry Bate of Mechelen[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was moved. --BDD (talk) 16:11, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Henry Bate of Malines → Henry Bate of Mechelen – Reasons given on Talk:Henry Bate of Malines#Henry Bate of Mechelen. ​▲ SomeHuman 2013-08-06 15:18 (UTC) 15:18, 6 August 2013 (UTC): His alternative names as neither Hendrik or Henri, nor Baten, commonly occur in English language texts. But the number of decent English language sources (e.g. published as google books) that mention 'Henry Bate of Mechelen' is comparable to those mentioning 'Henry Bate of Malines'. Obviously, both entries are required, one of which being a redirect to the entry having the article.[reply]

For the main article name however, it should be 'Henry Bate of Mechelen': The city of Mechelen may well be unique by having no less than three names in English:

  • Mechlin (from which 'Mechlinian' had been derived): The original English spelling of the city of Mechelen or in Latin Mechlinia. This name is still in use in a traditional context, in particular when a fixed association came to be, e.g. Mechlin lace. Also ancient weaving techniques from Mechelen had been introduced in England (before the 15th century) and relevant (present-day) texts might still show 'Mechlin'. For other subjects, even on pre 19th century old topics, recent texts appear to have abandoned 'Mechlin' in favour of 'Mechelen'.
  • Malines (from which 'Malinois' had been derived) is the French language name of the city, and in 1795 the present-day area of Belgium had been annexed by France [which might be the reason for Americans to speak of 'French' fries: Thomas Jefferson's cook may well have been made "French" by Napoleon]. At the independance of Belgium, the sole recognized language for (higher) education and the sole official language, was the minority language French. All published texts that might have come under foreign (i.e. in this case British or American) eyes, were in French. Often not even realizing that Malines and the historical and all but forgotten Mechlin were one and the same, the city became 'Malines' in English language.
  • Mechelen is at present the most common name and spelling in English. By personal experience during my many travels through Great-Britain, K.V. Mechelen once having won a European football competition suddenly had changed my by myself mentioned home town from "What" into "Ah, great football team!" The pronunciation of 'Mechelen' in English is not very noticably different from 'Mechlin'. The latter not being very commonly known any more in Britain and probably utterly unknown in the US, recent texts by American, as wel as Dutch and Flemish authors also in English language, and meanwhile also by British authors, use the spelling 'Mechelen' as in the city's own language. Perhaps not very surprisingly, the old term 'Mechlinian' is rarely used these days, and the Dutch language equivalent as adjective Mechels(e) or as substantive Mechelaar not at all in English; that meaning is now expressed by "of Mechelen".

For Henry Bate (who is in Dutch most often Hendrik Bate or Baten), the English language suffix 'of Mechelen' is far more common than 'of Mechlin'. Henry Bate's own time does not fit the period in which 'Malines' had appeared in English, and the number of occurrances in English of Henry Bate, is too meagre to consider an established usage (and as mentioned above, then 'Mechelen' appears about as often as 'Malines'). Also, 'Henri' is one of the spellings of H. B's forename, in fact the one from French language; then using instead English 'Henry' in conjunction with 'Malines' is sort of a contradictio in terminis. Let us see what modern texts in English show:

Today, in general, "Malines" is considered old-fashioned and only typical for texts published since the late 18th century until WW I; or even slightly past WW II because native speakers of English tend to know French rather than Dutch and thus used to read sources in French language while few native speakers of Dutch had by then published texts in English - the latter has changed very much during the last half century and in this same period, they stopped writing in French language altogether and native speakers of French have lost a good deal of their former interest in writing about Flemish cities and other typical Dutch language subjects. Apart from a few fixed expressions such as the Malinois is a variety of the Belgian shepherd dog and for collections of old postcards, the French language name of the city no longer fits the English language (as used by its native speakers and writers) and the future is very likely to make this even more obvious, if still possible.
​▲ SomeHuman 2013-08-06 15:18-16:29 [and minor clarification 2013-08-07 00:59] (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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