Talk:George Pal

Why Pál?
He is always billed as George Pal, with two seemingly English names.

If we are going to call him by his Hungarian name(s), then it should be György Pál, and not this half-and-half bastardization as currently exists.

This page should be moved back to plain old George Pal.

Varlaam (talk) 22:31, 30 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree, "George Pál" is a nonsensical name, neither English nor Hungarian, and I cannot find any evidence that he ever used it.


 * He seems to have consistently used the anglicised version in his professional life. See File:Film poster The War of the Worlds 1953.jpg, File:Brown,r time macine60.jpg, and File:Doc_Savage_VHS_cover.jpg, all for films which he produced, as examples. If he had wanted the accented version, I'm sure that, as producer, he would not only had oversight of the publicity materials, but also have been able to insist his name was spelled correctly on posters and box covers.


 * Similarly, the accent is not present in his various official records at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: see, for example, and, nor on his star on the Hollywood Star Walk: see . These are very public uses of his name by organizations with strong motivations to get his name right.


 * The anglicised version is also the common usage elsewhere: a Google search for "George Pal" finds around 160,000 of the unaccented version. A Google search for "George Pál" finds only around 20,000 hits, of which a great many are obviously sourced from Wikipedia, or are merely verbatim copies of Wikipedia material used on scraper sites. Moreover, the Google search for the unaccented version does not find a single case of the accented version in the first ten search result pages (which are presumably the results Google's algorithm considers most authoritative/relevant): by contrast, the search for the accented version finds numerous cases of the unaccented version.


 * So, we have extensive evidence of Pal's own consistent use of his unaccented anglicised name throught his career, cites of that same usage in all the authoritative sources I have found, and that usage being, by a factor of at least 8:1, the commonest on the Internet, particularly if you discard all the references from obvious derivatives of Wikipedia articles. At the same time, I cannot see any authoritative source using the other version of his name, or any evidence he ever used it himself. Put together using the WP:NAME criteria, these are collectively overwhelming evidence that "George Pal" is the correct version of his name, both in English and other languages.


 * Therefore, I have now fixed this error, and large numbers of other instances of the same mistake, wherever I could find them, in all other language editions of Wikipedia, and on Wikimedia Commons. ✅ -- The Anome (talk) 11:36, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Hungarian name
I have multiple sources that give his original name as "Györgi Pál Marczincsak" (or possibly "Marczincsák"?), and not "Marincsák" as shown previously here. See, for example, this Google search and the index of Hungarian cinema: from coffee house to multiplex by John Cunningham. A search for "György Pál Marincsák" suggests to me that it is an erroneous usage that is specific to the en: Wikipedia and material using it as a source. Is that correct? -- The Anome (talk) 09:23, 12 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Update: and this source from oscars.org says "Märczincsák", which is slightly different yet again. -- The Anome (talk) 01:36, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Father's name
The article cites his father's name as "George Pal Sr.", presumably meaning that his father's name was the same as his. However, his father's name at the time would have been his Hungarian name, since his father would, at the time of Pal's birth, have had no idea that his son would later anglicise his name for professional reasons, and no motivation, even if he had had a time machine in order to know that, to change his name to that of his son. I've therefore changed his father's name in the article to match Pal's birth name. However, I'd appreciate any fact-checking that anyone can do on this. -- The Anome (talk) 11:36, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I am a relative of George Pal and his father was Gyula Marczincsak Szabo --- Pal was an artistic last name — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.192.140.13 (talk • contribs)

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