5
$\begingroup$

I enjoy having this name. It makes me feel proud if someone handles it right.1

The name 't Hooft is quite often misspelled on the main site.

Feynmann occurs in at least 23 questions/answers. Feinman once. Fynman once. Einstien five times. Hawkins (not a Nobel laureate) four times.

Should something be done about it?

Here's a query that should be able to find most of these. Note that it runs on data dumps, so fixing a post on the site will not guarantee its removal from this list for a while.

1Here are some remarks on his name by 't Hooft. 9491 Thooft is a notable exception.

$\endgroup$
6
  • $\begingroup$ I can't find any evidence for your last claim $\endgroup$ – Manishearth May 6 '13 at 4:40
  • $\begingroup$ @Manishearth Thanks for the edit. I thought I saw four instances of Hooft/hooft, but, for the moment, I can only reproduce one: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/32210/…. $\endgroup$ – Řídící May 6 '13 at 6:01
  • $\begingroup$ @Manishearth And, I notice, you've taken on the task! Perhaps soon all the evidence for all my claims will be gone! :) $\endgroup$ – Řídící May 6 '13 at 6:22
  • $\begingroup$ Evidence destroyed :P Tangential note: as a native speaker of English (where the only prefix contraction is in the double contraction 'n'; 't is archaic and anyway doesn't stand alone), seeing a space-apostrophe-t always makes me do a double take. $\endgroup$ – Manishearth May 6 '13 at 7:02
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the link. I myself have a last name that gets misspelled a lot in Indian circles, it was a nice read that I could relate to :) $\endgroup$ – Manishearth May 6 '13 at 14:36
  • $\begingroup$ And no respect for great mathematicians either. You find many references to the divergence theorem in textbooks. I'm sure the esteemed D'Ivergence would be appalled by the flagrant disrespect. $\endgroup$ – twistor59 May 14 '13 at 16:02
7
$\begingroup$

Sure, just edit in the correct spelling, along with any other fixes required. (In most cases a question's title also stands to be improved, or a tag can be added, so that the edit is not just the spelling correction.)

This is not specific to Nobel laureates' names, by the way - it goes for any spelling corrections.

$\endgroup$
4
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Does your answer also apply to old posts? I mean, not that I'm planning to, but editing 101 posts is going to have some effects, as I am sure you are aware. :) $\endgroup$ – Řídící May 5 '13 at 8:44
  • $\begingroup$ Yep, old posts are equally valid candidates for editing. Just don't do too many at once. (5 edits of old questions per person per day is a useful guideline, but there is no hard limit except whatever may be imposed by the software.) $\endgroup$ – David Z May 5 '13 at 8:46
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ I would add: if you find old posts whose content are of doubtful quality, then don't try to put lipstick on a pig by merely removing the spelling mistakes. It would just create unnecessary noise on the front page. $\endgroup$ – Qmechanic♦ May 5 '13 at 23:57
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Who can make arbitrary edits? As far as I remember site prohibited me from suggesting edits if they were too minor. For example I couldn't suggest an edit fixing a typo only in one word. $\endgroup$ – Yrogirg May 17 '13 at 8:14

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .