LINNAEUS.

I have just discovered that “Linnaeus” was not a latinized version of Carl von Linné’s last name, as I had always supposed and as Webster’s Biographical Dictionary seemed to confirm; his father’s name was Nils Linnaeus, and he took the name “von Linné” when he was admitted to the aristocracy; see the biography here. You just never know. (Thanks, Nick!)

Comments

  1. David Marjanović says

    …and that shows up as a Linné in his later Latin works (like the 12th Edition of Caroli a Linné […] Systema Naturæ […]), his Latin being far too classical to admit de as “from/of” (as in one of his successors, Fischer de Waldheim).

    Nils got his last name when he entered university, taking it from the linden tree at the ancestral farm or something.

  2. I just learned that Anton Edvard Pratté (1796-1875) “was born Georg Anton Brát in Haida, Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic), into a large German-speaking family of marionette/ puppet-masters. […] It was during such a tour in Sweden while still a teenager that he decided to run away from a brutal father and harsh lifestyle. Changing his name to Anton Edvard Pratté, he embraced an international solo career, mostly playing his own compositions.”

  3. John Cowan says

    So what’s with the devoicing?

  4. And why the extra syllable? So many questions!

Speak Your Mind

*