Rachmaninov or Rachmaninoff?

[Renfield]

Hope this clears my point up a little bit. Would that I had a resurrection machine, for the second time tonight, that I might get the man himself here to settle this point once and for all. Alas, the resurrection machine seems just beyond my grasp...

Perhaps if you resurrected both Reiner and Rachmaninoff, they might play something together for us! How about the 3rd concerto?

[Maciek]

In other words, you and M's views contrast in whether the "tide" of linguistic evolution should also take chosen names with it, or not.

Oh, I understand that all right - I just don't agree.

That's actually my point. Since formal language does not concern itself with names beyond their status as nouns and how nouns work in a given language, we must go elsewhere to find out how to deal with them. It would be downright perverse to say that a person's name has no more significance in context than the words "stapler," "telephone," or "lamp."

Well, actually, if you want to bring it down to semantics, I'd like to point out the fact that proper names do not have meanings at all. They just have referents.

In other words, in the final context of Rachmaninoff, he gets to choose how his name is spelled and how it is pronounced. If people choose to spell it differently, they might be reflecting the latest trends in orthography and transcription, but the fact remains that they're committing a not-insubstantial faux pas.

I think you're stretching the argument a bit here. You obviously cannot be rude towards a person who has been dead for more than 60 years (at least not in any standard sense of the term). So the comparison is questionable. If there are names from times long past that are spelled differently today than they were in the time of their bearers, I don't think there's anything rude about that. I can't be rude towards those people today. I can, however, be rude to my contemporaries - if I don't adhere to the spelling rules they respect. Ha!

they might be "right,"

Do the scare quotes imply that in fact "they" are wrong?

Anyway, there's no point in continuing the discussion, since we've all agreed on the proper English spelling of Rachmaninoff (in case no one noticed: I conceded that according to the principles I use it turns out that Rachmaninoff is the "proper" spelling after all). What remains are principles, and I think GMG is not the best place to discuss them, so I suggest we lay down our arms before there are Wittgensteins and Strawsons flying about, and the forum stops serving its primary purpose: that of a place of relaxation before, after or in-between work.

Bowing out.

[Maciek]

Sorry, missed the part that you added into the quote:

[There is a discrete criterion for proper nouns, and capitalization is the accident, not the substance.]

If what you have in mind is the behavior of proper nouns in conjunction with articles, then Polish has analogous mechanisms, and it wouldn't be irrational to infer that all languages do. So I withdraw what I said about there being no grammatical differences between nomina propria and appellativa (thereby shattering a large but unnecessary part of my earlier argument ). Still, the analogy between, say, Polish and English still holds - either there are criteria in both the languages or in neither of them. And I still stand by my more general statement: namely that inflection has nothing to do with this. And, of course, whether there is an easy way to isolate proper names in a text/lexicon or not has little consequence for the matter at hand (which is why I say it was an unnecessary part of my argument).

OK, sorry for this. From now on, I promise to keep out and/or stick to matters strictly musical. 0:)

[MDL]

In Russian, Rachmaninov/ff is Рахманинов. B = v. Ф = f. Rachmaninov/ff didn't spell his name РахманиноФ. That would support the spelling Rachmaninov. However, the pronunciation of the Russian letter B varies. At the beginning of a word, it's normally a hard v, whereas at the end, it's a softer f. If Rachmaninov/ff chose a spelling that reflected the actual pronunciation of his name, rather than its original Russian spelling, then we should respect his wishes. It's a bit like Stravinsky adopting the spelling Strawinsky in Germany to stop Germans calling him Strafinsky.

[DavidRoss]

Just call him "Dwayne" and get it over with:

[karlhenning]

. . . Рахманинов  . . . would support the spelling Rachmaninov.

This detail was not a part of Dave's original question, but one key issue is Cyrillic letters for which there is no single Roman letter equivalent, such as х.  The letter combination "ch" works very naturally for German speakers, but in English (viz. church) that sound just isn't how we use that combination of letters . . . else we would spell the name of the fellow who banged his shoe at the UN Chruschstchev.

The larger point being, that Western transliterations of Cyrillic into Roman letters tend to differ according to the orthography of the various languages.

However, the pronunciation of the Russian letter B varies. At the beginning of a word, it's normally a hard v, whereas at the end, it's a softer f.

That description is (begging your pardon) a little variety of quite confused.  To quote John Cleese from The Meaning of Life, "it's perfectly simple" . . . . 

1.  Normally, в is simply a voiced v sound (Bера = Vera).

2.  When it precedes a voiceless consonant, or ends a word, the в is "devoiced," and becomes an f sound (Bторник [Tuesday] = "ftornik";  разлив [flood] = "razlif").

[mn dave]

Man, I start new threads without even trying. 

[Christo]

All very correct, but I think I miss one other key issue, still.

This one. `Rachmaninoff' was the transcription favoured by R. himself in his life-time, since it was according to the FRENCH transcription of his name. And before WWII, French used to be the dominant international language, especially in Europe.

Later transcriptions, since WWII especially, tend to follow practices in the Anglo-Saxon parts of this world. But many other languages - like e.g. German, Swedish, Dutch, Lithuanian, Portuguese, &c. - all have their own transcriptions systems and traditions for Russian names.

Btw, that's the reason why many in this forum, me included, are often not so sure about the correct English spelling of a name: Stravinski, Strawinsky, Strawinski, Stravinsky? (All correct, in some of the languages that I use to read ...   ).

[(poco) Sforzando]

One also sees Rakhmaninov and Rakhmaninoff at times.

And let's not get started on all the variants for Serge: Sergey, Serguei, Sergei, probably others. 

[MDL]

That description is (begging your pardon) a little variety of quite confused.  To quote John Cleese from The Meaning of Life, "it's perfectly simple" . . . . 

1.  Normally, в is simply a voiced v sound (Bера = Vera).

2.  When it precedes a voiceless consonant, or ends a word, the в is "devoiced," and becomes an f sound (Bторник [Tuesday] = "ftornik";  разлив [flood] = "razlif").

Now come on, that's hardly a million miles away from what I said, is it? Yours is obviously the more detailed analysis, and I am happy to defer to any Russian speakers since my Russian is absolute underpants. But regarding the pronuncation of the Russian letter в, I was simply paraphrasing my Russian for beginners book, which obviously simplifies things for simple folk like me; but that doesn't make it completely incorrect.

[karlhenning]

One also sees Rakhmaninov and Rakhmaninoff at times.

I've never seen the latter;  only speaking for my own eyes, you understand.

Current English-language scholarly transliteration appears to be favoring the former, as most clearly indicating the source spelling in Cyrillic.

[MDL]

I want to know why Mussorgsky is being replaced by Musorgsky. The BBC have been using Musorgsky for years and now everybody else seems to be following suit.

[karlhenning]

Now come on, that's hardly a million miles away from what I said, is it?

No, perhaps only a few hundred thousand miles 

My issue isn't so much detail, as clarity; your paraphrase was confused.  One specific instance is your "hard v" / "softer f" comment.  I have spoken Russian for a decade and a half now, but I honestly have no inkling what you're after, there, especially because the adjectives soft/hard have very specific applications to vowels (and the consonants they may affect) . . . every consonant at the end of a Russian word is a hard consonant, unless it is followed by a soft sign (мягкий знак).

I want to know why Mussorgsky is being replaced by Musorgsky. The BBC have been using Musorgsky for years and now everybody else seems to be following suit.

Because in Russian there is only one с after the у in Мусоргский.

[MDL]

I have spoken Russian for a decade and a half now, but I honestly have no inkling what you're after, there, especially because the adjectives soft/hard have very specific applications to vowels (and the consonants they may affect) . . . every consonant at the end of a Russian word is a hard consonant, unless it is followed by a soft sign (мягкий знак).

Because in Russian there is only one с after the у in Мусоргский.

OK, using the words "hard" and "soft" was a mistake because, yes, of course, they do have very specific meanings in Russian. I was merely trying to describe how the sound would be to a layman with absolutely no understanding of Russian pronunciation, and wasn't expecting to be hauled over the coals by a snotty pedant.

A quote from lesson one in my Ruslan Russian for Beginners:

This sounds like the V in "vary" but can sound like the F at the end of a word.

pdf file should you need to look it up:

http://www.ruslan.co.uk/r1intro.pdf

Seems fairly obvious to me, but feel free to carry on point-scoring.

[karlhenning]

Seems fairly obvious to me, but feel free to carry on point-scoring.

You looking in a mirror, fellow?  My posts have been entirely about clarity and what is the case.  Seems fairly obvious to me, but feel free to carry on your hissy-fit.

And, by the way, you are welcome (viz. Musorgsky).

[M forever]

I am still puzzled why some people find it so hard to understand that spelling rules do not apply to names. Which is why we have such a wide variety of different versions of the same or similar names. These variations often tell a story. My name is fairly rare and I have never met anyone outside my family who had the same name (although it's not that extremely rare), but I can think of two well known persons with the same name, Peter Shaffer (who wrote "Amadeus") and Paul Shaffer (band leader of the Letterman show). In both cases, the anglicized spelling of their names without the C reflects both where their families came from originally but also where these people live today. Technically, from Maciek's point of view, their names are misspelled though. But I don't think it would occur to anyone to make them change the spelling of their own names, would it?

[karlhenning]

I am still puzzled why some people find it so hard to understand that spelling rules do not apply to names.

For English speakers, it's not so very hard.  After all, Shakespeare spelled his own name three different ways, on three different documents, on (IIRC) the same day.

(Bet you can't say that about Goethe 

[pjme]

AFAIK, I see "Rakhmaninov" also quite often in German publications.

P.

[M forever]

For English speakers, it's not so very hard.  After all, Shakespeare spelled his own name three different ways, on three different documents, on (IIRC) the same day.

In case you didn't know, WS lived several hundred years ago. A lot of people did that back then. Today, no one who isn't dyslexic spells his name randomly.

[karlhenning]

In case you didn't know, WS lived several hundred years ago.

Well, that is a surprise