Talk:Božidarka Frajt

Frajt or Frait?

Timbouctou, here's the story:

• Google search in the .hr domain: 2200 vs 1250 in favor of Frajt, that's true, but...
• The title of a recent documentary about her uses Freit[1]
• Filmski leksikon uses Freit throughout, including her bio[2]
• Imenik.hr finds a person named Božidarka Freit in Zagreb, along with her phone number (I'm omitting the link, of course)
• Kgz.hr says Freit[3]
• Pula Film Festival, on the occasion of her receiving the Vladimir Nazor Award, says Freit,[4] even if...
• at the same time HAVC says Frajt,[5] and...
• many online articles say Frajt too, just as many say Freit
• IMDb may or may not be reliable here with Frajt

My guess is that at some point she legally changed her name from Frajt to Freit, which hasn't registered with everybody. (Well, hasn't registered with me: I became aware of this spelling only during the expansion of The Living Truth days ago.) I know having legally changed one's name may not necessarily count towards naming the article that way, but on the strength of more recent, high-quality sources I went with Frait. So, what's it going to be? GregorB (talk) 20:48, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Oh I don't really know what to do here. Imdb primarily uses the name as it had appeared on screen in film credits, and since the person is an actress I guess the form used throughout her career in film titles should take precedence. My guess is that the "Frait" or "Freit" (the latter used occasionally by Jutarnji and Matica, while the former is used in the recent documentary and Filmski Leksikon) is a result of hypercorrection based on the idea that a phonetic spelling typical of Serbian ("Frajt") should be backformed into its original version, like for example Franjo Wölfl who was throughout his sports career referred to in Serbia as "Velfl". But in his case I assume the original spelling was used in parallel in Croatian media throughout his career. Now I assume the documentary and Imenik.hr are factually correct with "Frait" - regardless of the fact whether she changed it recently or has been called that way formally all these years without us knowing about it - but it still does not negate the fact that she is mainly known for appearing in films, where she was credited as "Božidarka Frajt", even in films produced by Croatian film studios (which used the Croatian variety of the language in credits) such as Face to Face (1963) and Čovik od svita (1965). After marrying, she appeared once in 1975 on screen as "Božena Frait-Gregurić" in Passion According to Matthew and it took ten years before her name appeared as "Božidarka Frait" once in 1986. In everything she has made since she was always credited as "Božidarka Frajt", including her most recent appearance in Šegrt Hlapić (2013). [6] On the other hand, we often move articles after retired sportswomen get married to reflect their new names (like Danira Bilić who is much better known as Danira Nakić since she spent her entire sports career using that name) so I really don't know. Timbouctou (talk) 22:07, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Some very good points. My guess is that she abandoned the phonetic spelling in the similar way e.g. Branko Schmidt did (was Šmit, IIRC) - there are probably more examples I cannot remember right now. It could go either way: Frajt is more common, while it could be argued Freit is more "correct" (from the modern-day perspective).

This reminds me of Svetozar Rittig (I've been planning to write his bio since forever), who actually signed his name (and was largely known) as Ritig. Tricky call.

Let's keep Frajt for the time being then. GregorB (talk) 23:44, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, it seems to me her documents always officially stated "Frait" but she adopted the "Frajt" spelling as kind of an artistic pseudonym, hence its usage well into the 2010s. Timbouctou (talk) 21:36, 7 December 2014 (UTC)