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Latest comment: 13 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
I have changed all references of "German Gref" (sounds like a nickname!) to his proper German name "Herrmann Gräf". I imagine the incorrect spelling comes from an incorrect transliteration of his name from Russian. But since the name is German I believe this is the correct action. If I'm wrong please correct me, but I haven't found any guidelines on this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Moltovivo (talk • contribs) 09:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)Reply
And you should, please, in turn look at the Russian version of the article on him. There you can nowhere find his name written as "German Gref", but the German spelling "Herrmann Gräf" instead. When transliterating according to the GOST 7.79 System B standard, which is used, e.g., for passports, his Cyrillic name would be converted to "German Gref" in latin letters. But when transliterating names back into latin characters, one is supposed to use the original spelling in most cases, regardless of what the standard says. Here, that original spelling was undoubtedly "Her(r)mann Gräf" (the variant "Hermann" is much more common in first names than "Herrmann"). Also, in German the names "Hermann"/"Herrmann" and "German"/"Germann" are two distinctly different ones, having largely different etymology and meaning (I happen to know because I am a native German speaker and my family name is "Hermann"; I also happen to speak Russian, though not fluently). The "German Gref" spelling is just a frequent misconception about the origins of the subject's name, who, in the end, would likely be the only one able to give an authoritative answer. Hence, in keeping with the Russian article, I believe, replacing the latin forms with "Hermann Gräf" is fully warranted. -- HH 85.180.182.110 (talk) 00:31, 30 September 2011 (UTC)Reply