Oh, not just for that. I've been enjoying your writing since the mid 00's. You are also hardly the first person writing foreign names in English to get it wrong, I mean, just look at the long list of Americanized Dutch names. I actually find it vexing when words, but especially names, from any language are not spelled in accordance with their native language rules when they're supposed to be according to the narration. I just notice it more in Dutch.

It just sprang out as unusual compared to your otherwise generally excellent standards.

>I confess to substantial ignorance as to Dutch naming conventions; I
>chose this, er, gentleman's name pretty much at random, having seen it
>somewhere before. (I think I may also have been subconsciously
>inflenced by the name of the late Jacob van Zanten, the KLM captain
>whose impetuosity triggered the Tenerife disaster]). As such, I'd be >happy to rename him something more plausible for a civilian sea officer of >modest means if you've any suggestions.

Naming conventions prior to the Bataafse Republiek among commoners tended strongly towards three part names. Jan Pieterszoon Coen is a good example, as are Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp and Piet Pietersen Heyn. Jasper Liefhebber is not, but that might indicate he didn't know his father (his surname can translate to 'lover' or 'preferer', depending), or that there has simply been no record of it.

The setup was generally one's first name(s) (Dutch literally translated calls these 'in front name(s)', the Dutch for surnames is literally to 'behind names'), a patronymic (when written their father's name suffixed by -szoon, -sz. -sz or -sen; the -szoon and -sz. suffixes are interchangeable, the period behind -sz. indicates it's an abbreviation. This gets confusing in situations you'd usually use a period anyway) and what the Romans would consider a cognomen. This could be or become a family name, but it was just as often a descriptor of one's job or any other relevant way to distinguish between two people of similar names in a town or city. This could and did change.

These descriptors rarely referred to towns or villages, but more often referred to the job of the head of the family, a family trait, or a location in or near the town one happened to live, like an important structure (Van Kerck (from church) and Van Dijck (from levee) are common enough), as are forests (both in general and specific tree species) and streams, ponds and rivers. Someone who happened to live on a hill might be known as 'Van Bergh', which is rather ambitious since that translates directly to 'from mountain'.

If you weren't a noble and had the last name of 'Van (town, city, village)' it usually indicated you or your parents came from a different city, and it happened in living memory.

Which, I suppose, is all hopefully interesting but not very helpful. Thankfully, just switching to 'Van Zandt' would cover this. It'd indicate he either came from a place by the name of Zandt (there's been a few, it just means 'sand', archaic spelling aside), or that he came from a relatively sandy place.

The nobility was generally kept away from the Dutch navy and merchant marine, on the notion that having the nobility play with the armies was much safer for a republic where such orangist sentiments could be left in less prestigious areas of society.

>Speaking of, is the "V" in "Van (etc.)" meant to be capitalized when
>it's not at the beginning of a sentence? I always thought it was,
>distinct from e.g. the German "von", which isn't, but I just looked up
>van Zanten on Wikipedia to make sure I was remembering his name right,
>and they have it with a small "v".

Yes, it's meant to be capitalized in this case, and Van Zanten's name should be spelled as such. So let's this time not dodge that thing were I went:

>>And that's before we get into the rules regarding prepositions and
>>articles in Dutch names.

And get into it.

It's actually rather simple, but creates odd cases for other languages. The first letter of the first component of a name is always capitalized, even when like with prepositions and articles they are normally not.

Let us presume that our disagreeable first mate's full name is Boudewijn Ferdinandszoon van Zandt, just pulled his first and middle name from a name generator and turned the middle one into a patronymic.

This spelling, anachronistically recent spelling aside, is correct.

If you shorten his first name and patronymic to their initials, the correct spelling is 'B. F. van Zandt'.

If we refer to him as 'Van Zandt' or 'Van Zandt, B. F.' however, that is correct, because 'Van' is now the first component.

If his name is indexed as 'Zandt, van' or 'Zandt, B. F. van' however, this is still correct, because now 'Zandt' is the first component. This is also how generally speaking Dutch databases sort names; everything before the first noun is appended at the back. If the database didn't the entries at 'de', 'der', 'van', 'van de' and 'van der' would be endless, as they are very common in surnames and alphabetical name sorting in databases is generally on the basis of the surname.

>Aha, so noted. I was finding estimates that varied wildly (one site
>said it was around a thousand dollars, which I figured couldn't
>possibly be right just because it was such an outlier), so I sort of
>split the difference.

Part of the problem is no doubt that it's actually very hard to estimate relative purchasing power, especially comparing before and after the Industrial Revolution. You can go by raw compounded inflation of course, but that's not likely to be accurate. A modern day inflation corrected sum in guilders (if such a thing still existed) would buy substantially more than that comparison implies simply because everything is a lot cheaper than it was.

That outlier is still unreasonable though, but not because it's too much for half a month's wages for an ocean going ship's first mate. It'd translate to twenty four thousand dollars on a yearly basis, for a pretty dangerous job (a very large number of the people that sailed the East India route didn't come home, at least early on survival was basically a coin toss) and with a lot of responsibility. Even a small ship would easily have a crew of more than a score of men, and one of the duties of the first mate is to take over if the captain's unwell, or dead.