I'ay souhaité souuent que ceux qui escriuent les
histoires en Latin nous laissassent nos noms tous
tels qu'ils sont: car, en faisant de Vaudemont,
Vallemontanus, et les metamorphosant pour les
garber à la Grecque ou à la Romaine, nous ne
sçauons où nous en sommes et en
perdons la connoissance.
—Essais I 46
In matters of genealogy it is necessary to give
the bare names as they are; but in poetry,
and in prose of any elegance in the writing,
they require to have inflexion given to them.
—Johnson
Whether writing in Latin or in French, Badius never used any form other than the Latin ‘Badius’, and there is no first-hand evidence either for the Flemish form ‘De Bauw’ or for the gallicization ‘Bade’. Badius never called himself ‘Josse Bade’, and it appears only very rarely in contemporary documents in French: the Latin form of his name was often preferred. In a 1528 document in French, which records a dispute over printing costs between Badius and Jacques Colin, the printer is throughout referred to as ‘Josse Badius’. The fact that he himself, when writing in French, used the name ‘Josse Badius’ suggests that this was his personal name and Ascensius was used as a sort of Latin professional name connected with his printing and scholarly activities (‘praelum Ascensianum’; ‘interpretatio Ascensii’; ‘apex Ascensianus’). The consistent use of the name ‘Badius’ rather than ‘Ascensius’ in his personal correspondence supports this.… as his career progressed, the name ‘Ascensius’ appeared less frequently, and ‘Badius’ was used more often. (White)
Burmannis a back-formation from Latin used by foreigners like Lessing and Gibbon.
A marginal note to a copy of Rosweyde’s Life, held in the Plantin-Moretus Museum, says that ‘among serious-minded men in Spain, there was disagreement about whether the names Delrio and Delrío were one and the same or different, a doubt which caused the change of names,’ i.e. from Del Rio to Del Río. (Maxwell-Stuart and Valverde)
… we see a consistent pattern throughout Gessner’s life of writing his and his family’s name in German documents with a double s, and, after 1540, of signing and publishing his name in Latin with one s. (Pyle)
Janus de Gruytere (album amicorum)
Jan Gruterwas probably fromJan. Gruter.
Contemporary documents, in fact, support the spelling ‘Holstein’.… ‘Holste’ and ‘Holsten’ are therefore misguided back-formations from the Latin name. It may be added, incidentally, that the spelling ‘Lukas’ sometimes seen in German publications represents a modernisation foreign to Holstenius’s own usage. (N. & Q.)
Hotoman, et non pas Hotman; c’est l’orthographe qu’il a toujours préférée. (Cougny)
… du feu jurisconsulte Hotman, mon pere … (Jean Hotman)
Is de la Monnoye’s theory that ‘[s]on vrai nom étoit Hotman, qu’il changea en Hotoman … on a toujours dit Hotman’ anything more than a theory?
That Postgate spelt the Latinised form thus is shown by Mnem. 52 (1924), 21 excogitauit Housmanus. (In the Corpus he does not use Latin forms of the names of contemporary scholars.) Housman at first used this form himself (Burnett 1.518), but he came to prefer Housmannus (Praef. ad Man. ed. min., viii n. 1). (Hopkinson)
James Jurin
Massey had a sound criticism of Jurin, but it came too late to undermine Jurin’s propaganda (R. P. Stearns)
Coray (without initial) is what he called himself in France. (Diggle)
Da Hans L e w e n k l a w erst in späteren Jahren sich dieser deutschen form in seinen Werken bediente, unbekümmert übrigens offensichtlich um die in Pommern, Mecklenburg und Schlesien sowie in Sachsen schon damals verbreiteten Träger eines gleichlautenden Adelsnamens, vorher aber ausnahmslos die lateinische Fassung L e o n c l a j u s und späterhin L e u n c l a v i u s wählte, erscheint es ausgemacht, daß er über eine schlichte Herkunft den Mantel der Vergessenheit zu breiten trachtete und in der vornehmen Umwelt, in der er damals sich fast ausschließlich bewegte, den Anschein adeliger Abstammung erwecken wollte. Daß ihm dies bei seinen Zeitgenossen und selbst bei seinem adeligen Umgang, aber auch bei späteren Geschlechtern gelang, beweist wohl der Umstand, daß hier zum ersten Male der Schleier über die unvornehme Abkunft Hans Lewenklaws gelüftet wird. Das Bestreben, vornehmtuerisch adeliges Geblüt vorzutäuschen, lag im Zuge jener Zeit, und man braucht aus der Gelehrtengeschichte nur den Fall des Josef-Justus Scaliger, seines Zeitgenossen und guten Bekannten, herauszugreifen, um dieses Gehabe mit einem besonders peinlichen Beispiel zu belegen. (Babinger)
“Nicolas-Claude Fabry de Callas”: this is how he signed his first three letters between 1602 and 1604 … in the postscript to the fourth … he asked Clusius to address his letters to “Sr. de Peirests, chez monsr. le conseiller de Callas.” … he signed the very next letter “N. C. Fabry,” and the next two letters … “N. C. de Peirets.” Only in the last preserved letter, dated 15 February 1606, do we find the now-familiar “Peiresc” scrawled at the bottom of the page. He explained to Clusius that his new name was the Provençal form of the old Latin: “Notre petit village de Peiresc s’appelle dans les vieux cadastres Latins Castrum de Petrisco.” (Peter N. Miller)
Why is Peireskius, or any man else, to be abused for an appetite for that, or any other morsel of sound knowledge? (Sterne)
Schmidt signed himself
M. Erasmus Schmidt, butSchmid, a back-formation fromSchmidius, already occurred in the 17th century.
‘It is remarkable, that though his name was Jonathan, in his later writings [for instance, in the title-page and dedication of his edition of Longinus] he always calls himself in Latin Joannes Toupius. In some of the books he had when young, he has written E Libris Jona. Toup.’ — Gentleman’s Magazine, March, 1785, p. 186. Before he became bold enough to write Joannes Toupius at length, he called himself in Latin Jo. Topius. He adopts this contraction in his Emendationes in Suidam, and he is called Jo. Toupius by Dr. Burney, who writes at full length the names of the other six ‘Magnanimi Heroës.’ The old controversy respecting Consul Tertium and Consul Tertio was decided in the same manner. A. Gellius, L. X, cap. 1. (Elmsley)
P. Daniel qui n’etoit pas des plus doctes, les avoit trouvez à S. Germain, les montra à Monsieur Turnebus et à moy. (Scaliger)