Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/30

 French “Juliers” and the German “Jülich;” neither has become so fully established as to possess the ground by right, and I have preferred the latter. With these hints the reader will be able to trace my course through the whole list of geographical names.

As to personal names, where I regarded the usage as well established, I have followed it. I have, for instance, written “Charles” for the German “Karl,” and yet “Carl” also is an English name; and I have written “Carl von Zerotin’ simply because I did not like to translate the “von,” and so transferred the whole name. It may be too that “Carl” has been unintentionally written in other instances where it has not been deemed worth while to change it back in the plates. I have intentionally written both “Lewis” and “Louis”—the former for Germans, the latter for Frenchmen. Those old names which used to be latinized so as to end in “aus,” I have written after the analogy of “Nicholas,” as “Ladislas” and “Wenceslas,” although, if I could now revise these and others, I should introduce modifications; I should write, for instance, simply the German “ Wenzel.”

One thing more: I had at first planned to indicate in parentheses the correct pronunciation of a few names foreign alike to French, German, and English and of difficult pronunciation. This attempt, however, I soon abandoned as worse than useless, for two reasons: first, the dictionaries furnish all needed aid in this matter; and, secondly, I did not in the beginning intend to do more than indicate the pronunciations which varied most widely from that of our corresponding letters, as the Spanish “ñ,” the Bohemian “e,” “c,” and “í,” so that the reader would, after all, have been left imperfectly instructed. In the meantime, however, these first indica-