Talk:Jan Jacobszoon May van Schellinkhout

Name Mayen

The name of this man is "Jan ... May". So why the islands name is "Jan Mayen" please? --Nolanus (talk) 14:56, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm going to speculate here of course. Until 1811 in the Netherlands, surnames were flexible and spelled the way the scribe felt like. Maij/May and (Carolus' spelling) Meij/Mey (the ij digraph is often rendered as a y) are from origin either a patronym or matronym: son of Maij or Meij (both basically obsolete names, certainly short forms of something, e.g. Meiert). In North Holland north of Amsterdam many patronyms/matronyms dropped the "son" suffix and the genitive (e.g. Boon, Booij, Zijm), but elsewhere they are generally there in the form of -en, -s, -sen, or -ssen. See for example the forms Maijen and Maijs. Perhaps Blaeu, despite being from Maij's neck of the wood, decided to go with the form Maijen. Alternatively and simpler, Jan Mayen [Eiland] means Jan May's [Island]. At least in Middle Dutch (used before the 16th century) -en was used as a genitive for "weak nouns". Maij doesn't end with an "e" as weak nouns did, so this doesn't quite square, but Blaeu's grammar may have been flexible;-) Afasmit (talk) 18:24, 21 July 2018 (UTC)