Talk:Haydn's name

Josef/Joseph and Ngrams
Can someone withe a knowledge of German spelling reform have a look at the final section please. I've tried to clean up the footnote and inline text but am having issues with:

1) According to German_orthography the reform seems to have started at least a decade later than quoted here.

2) The Ngram graphs appear to be showing the same patterns, just over a different date range. They present in different ways and with different data, so can someone who is familiar with the tool have a look please.  Is it necessary to have both or will one do?

Thanks, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:45, 22 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you.


 * The use of ngrams is my fault. I really wish I could find a real scholarly source that said exactly when German speakers started spelling ph words with f.  This would be better than using the Google Ngram Viewer, which I think is in danger of violating the WP ban on original research (WP:NOR). But I can't find such a source, at least yet.


 * Given that we are already on thin ice, I think being conservative is the best policy. I would suggest hedging the sentence ""Josef" resulted from German spelling reform after 1860." It seems very likely to be true but we don't yet have a source.


 * I will next apply a couple tweaks and bring this to the attention of a German-speaking editor I know.


 * Yours very truly, Opus33 (talk) 22:25, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Ok, now I've edited, and I'm also out of time for now, but I think it still needs work. Trying to be organized, there two issues: (1) whether or not to use "Franz"; (2) the origin and status of "Josef". The latter issue involves us in German data, since it was the German spelling reform that gave rise to it. If someone else doesn't do it first, I'm inclined to put all the "Franz" discussion before all of the "Josef" discussion, in order to make things clearer. Opus33 (talk) 22:42, 22 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks Opus33, that is very much clearer. I've changed the references slightly, having them end with links called "[1]", "[2]" and "[3]" is a bit confusing: the fact that they are links is not so clear, and there is no correlation to notes "[1]", "[2]" and "[3]".  I've therefore moved the links to the front of the note and attached them to "Ngram view".  If you want to move the links to the names, for example, feel free to do so. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:50, 23 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I think your reformat is helpful -- thank you. I went ahead and reorganized prose so that "Franz" is discussed first, then "f" in Josef.  Regards, Opus33 (talk) 03:17, 24 June 2014 (UTC)