Talk:Pieter Neefs the Elder

Name Spelling
Can we get a ruling on how his name is spelled Neefs vs. Neeffs? Or is one a variation of the other, in which case it should be noted in the article. The article currently has it spelled differently between the title, the img, and the references. Keithh (talk) 15:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Such spelling differences are common in historical artists' names, and the artists themselves were frequently not consistent. In this case, two sources (the Yale books) use "Neeffs", while the Grove dictionary of art uses Neefs (although even it is inconsistent between articles and recognizes "Neeffs" as an alternative spelling). A quick look at an index of  17th century archival mentions of the painter in Antwerp show that his name was variously spelled "Neefs", "Neeff", Neeffs", "Nef", and "Neve" there. The National Gallery in London goes with "Neeffs" while the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam uses "Neefs". My unscientific intuition is that in current literature "Neeffs" would slightly outnumber "Neefs", but both are fairly common and I was responsible for using both in this article. Therefore, I added an "also" for that variation. --Stomme (talk) 16:34, 13 August 2008 (UTC)