Talk:Thomas John I'Anson Bromwich

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What's his third name?

Latest comment: 13 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

It makes linguistic sense for his third name to be l'Anson with a lowercase L, as that is like French for "the", i.e. "le" (or "la"), with an elision before the vowel. Pretensious but not uncommonly so. However, here and in several other places it's (inconsistently) reported as "I'Anson" with an uppercase i. This makes less linguistic sense to me (unless it's from a linguistic construct from a language I haven't encountered, which is possible).

But I've come into possession of the bound volume 5 and 6 of the Journal of the London Mathematical Society (amazing what you can pick up in thrift shops) dating from 1930 - and it consistently reports him as I'Anson (uppercase i), that is, both as the byline of an article written by him, and also in his obituary by G.H. Hardy. "Thomas John I'Anson Bromwich", no question about it, the letter has 4 symmetrical serifs, making it unmistakably a capital i. Also appears as such on contents pages and in citations.

So the question is: where do we go for a definitive answer? I've left a message at MacTutor (but they're on summer break so it may be a while before they get back to me, and they're probably also getting tired of all the emails I send them, so they may take some time before they reply, if at all). --Matt Westwood 20:39, 15 August 2011 (UTC)Reply

The Library of Congress Authorities also use I'Anson with uppercase i: http://lccn.loc.gov/n84806257 Gestumblindi (talk) 01:24, 1 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

When I checked old books and articles, I too found that Bromwich's middle name was I'Anson with a capital "eye", so that is the spelling. A quick search using Google shows that there are a number of people with the surname I'Anson with an "eye", and some theories about how that name is derived. Cardamon (talk) 06:52, 1 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

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