Re: Linnaeus --> von Linne (was RE: Albisaurus)

[Tommy Tyrberg <tommy.tyrberg@norrkoping.mail.telia.com>]

Nick Pharris wrote:

>The Swedes of the time had an odd penchant for adding things like accents 
and Latinoid -us endings to their names, along with weird (for Swedish) 
letters like z and (soft) c.  Hence names like Celsius, or that of chemist 
Jöns Berzelius.<

The custom of latinizing names was quite common in Europe in the Middle 
Ages and up to the eighteenth century. In Sweden by Linnaeus' time it was 
largely restricted to families with clerical/academic backgrounds. Such 
names could be either latinized forms of extant names or created _de novo_. 
In Linnaeus' case the latter is true. His father coined the name from a 
large lime tree (Swedish 'Lind') on the ancestral farm in Småland. When 
Linnaeus was ennobled he chose the name von Linné. The "von" is of course a 
german preposition meaning "of, from", in names this was originally 
followed by the name of feudal seat of a noble family, however by Linnaeus' 
time it had simply come to indicate noble status ("de" has the same 
function in french).

So, Linnaeus' name was originally "Linnaeus" and later "von Linné". He was 
never at any time named just "Linné".