Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 10:01:27 -0700

From: Peter McGraw pmcgraw[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]LINFIELD.EDU

Subject: Re: Garcia (Marquez)



On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, Ron Butters wrote:



I'm sure you are right--and for Mexico as well. I knew that ONE of the names

could be dropped--maybe I was mixing up Spanish and Russian? (Does anybody

know about Russian?)



In Russian the patronymic comes first, but is not the surname, which comes

last, e.g., Boris Nikolaievich Yeltsin. The suffix -evich means "son of."

Russians often use the first name and the patronymic in contexts where we

would use just the first name. And now I'm getting out of my depth, so

won't hazard a guess as to whether there are different social contexts for

first-name-only vs. first-name-plus-patronymic.





And why, by the way, did Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe have such a complicated

name?





Even though I'm fluent in German, Dutch and Germanic philology (and not

Russian), I haven't a clue as to this one. "Ludwig" is German, "van" is

most likely Dutch, "Rohe" looks German, and the pattern "X van der Y" (as

opposed to just "van der Y") as a surname is not typical for either

language.



Peter McGraw