Talk:Johann Weyer

The name debate

It is true that Weyer was a Netherlander and thus that his name could fairly be rendered "Johan Wier." The form "Johannes Wier" likewise has some argument in its favor for being the form commonly used in his sixteenth-century publications. Nevertheless, the form "Johann Weyer" has become standard in English language scholarship. This status has been affirmed recently by its use by witchcraft scholars such as Stuart Clark, Christopher Baxter, and especially H.C. Erik Midelfort referenced in the article. Likewise, "Johann Weyer" is the standardized form in the National Library of Medicine's database. Finally compare Google's 53,300 to 1,640 advantage of Johann Weyer over Johan Wier. Note as well that other early modern Dutch folks such as Hugo Grotius (Hugo de Groot) pass by accepted non-Dutch versions of their names in Wikipedia.Gamonetus (talk) 13:52, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

The usage difference is not that large: "Johannes Wier" googles 21,600 results, the hybrid "Johann Wier" 12,700, and "Jan Wier" 8680. "Jan Wier" is the way his family and friends would have called him and is used in the most recently written biographies on him. Also, the comparison with Hugo Grotius is inappropriate: all scholars in the Low Countries in those days used Latinized names (like Wier used Wierus or Piscinarius), but few (if any) used Germanized names. Nevertheless, it's true that in German and English literature he is now almost always called Johann Weyer, while in French, Italian, and Dutch he is consistently named "Wier". My eye fell on a review of Midelfort's 1998 book with the line "Johan Wier (whom Midelfort, too, insists on calling Weyer)".

If it is true that Wier/Weyer always signed with Wier or sometimes Piscinarius (see here for a confirmation that he used it in all his correspondence), it would be interesting to figure out and include in the text when and why English and German people started calling him Weyer. His son Theodorus/Diederik Wier, a diplomat of some consequence to Dutch history, retained the name Wier and the memorial in Germany built in 1884 was baptized and is still called "Wierturm" rather than "Weyerturm". The use of "Weyer" may stem from Carl Binz's 1896 monograph "Doctor Johann Weyer, ein rheinischer artz, der erste bekämpfer des Hexenwahns", who in 1887 had already given a lecture "Wier oder Weyer?". In his introduction, he first comforts the German reader that "Weyer zur deutchen Nation zählte" and then claims that Wier a Niederrheinische dialectical pronunciation is of Weyer. Though this almost certainly is a fantasy (Jan's father brought the surname Wier from Zeeland), and perhaps stemmed from Binz's desire to make Wier a German, his monograph may have been the main one on Wier and his plea for using Weyer may have resonated so much that it replaced the use of Wier in German and English. Binz states that in his translation into High German of his main work and in his "Arzney-Buch" in that language, he signed with "Johan Weyer" (note that even here it isn't Johann, which is purely German; one might as well call the article "John Weyer"). Wîer and wijer (both pronounced [ˈʋiər] rather than [ʋir] and perhaps akin to the Dutch word rivier for river) were old spellings of the modern Dutch "vijver" (= pond, or piscinarius in Latin), so it is very likely, as Binz suggested, that the name Wier was pronounced with two syllables and Wier may have decided to change the spelling of his name when writing in High German to emphasize this.

Perhaps you or I can get a hold of one of the recent biographies to see what they say about it. We could add a short section "name" once we have good sources to quote from.Afasmit (talk) 16:06, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughtful and engaging response. It seems like you have most of the needed material at hand to write the "name" section you call for. (Spelling Wier: From Binz to Midelfort?). The talk section may soon be of greater scholarly value than the article itself. I am nearly persuaded that if we could turn the clock back prior to Binz, we would likely opt for "Jan Wier" or something along those lines as opposed to "Johann Weyer." However as I understand Wikipedia naming conventions, "Johann Weyer" should stand due to its established use in English-language scholarship. As in: "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's 'official' name as an article title; it instead uses the name which is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This includes usage in the sources used as references for the article." This policy would seem to unequivocally favor "Johann Weyer," which H.C. Erik Midelfort either intentionally or unintentionally cemented in recent decades. We can always ask him what he was thinking.

If it seemed I was a little heavy handed in my initial posting, I will add that I am weary of projecting too much national identity into pre-modern Wikipedia articles. Jan Wier does not "belong" to Germany or the Netherlands but was a cosmopolitan intellectual in the early modern period. I don't find its necessary to reclaim him definitively for the Netherlands, though I was the one who added the infobox with the Dutch flag. Ironically the Germans are not resolute maintaining his "German" identity as the BSB lists him "Johannes Wier." Gamonetus (talk) 00:14, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Andrewa (talk) 01:46, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

---

Johan Wier → Johann Weyer — Rationale above in "the name debate."--Gamonetus (talk) 14:10, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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