Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 July 1

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July 1[edit]

German for Anne?[edit]

Perhaps a bit confusingly, the writers of Six (musical) named their queen (4) Anna of Cleaves [Cleves], instead of Anne of Cleves. Common in parts of Britain? German? or . . .? Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:17, 1 July 2019 (UTC) (Strike particularly unfortunate typo distraction thanks for noting -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:15, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Our article starts "Anne of Cleves (German: Anna von Kleve)". Rmhermen (talk) 17:45, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
However "Cleaves" seems to be just plain wrong; the English surname Cleaves comes from the Old English for "cliff". [2]. Alansplodge (talk) 19:33, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's the OP's typo; the musical uses Cleves. [3] HenryFlower 20:19, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
But, to be fair, in Anne's day the idea that a particular spelling could be "just plain wrong" had not exactly been established. No two of the surviving signatures of William Shakespeare are spelled the same way. --76.69.117.113 (talk) 21:16, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Spelling, schpelling.[1] Martinevans123 (talk) 21:43, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, oddly enough only after I posted did I see that parenthetical Anna in our article, I guess I wonder why they made that choice to do partial German of her name if that's why they did it (or perhaps scholarship shows she almost always went by Anna during her life and the authors decided to go with that, instead of with those who anglicized) Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:22, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

References

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