tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?)

Will Jagy comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10238)

Will Jagy — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 18:43:14 -0700

I have figured it out. I assumed that since it was the first, and only, word of the sentence, D'artagnan was naturally capitalized. So it is only half my fault for not noticing the lower case 'a. Something along the lines of "I nominate D'artagnan" would have worked. I am redeemed, at least a little.

WillieWong comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10236)

WillieWong — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:58:05 -0700

Ack Gretar, you've just reminded of my trouble recently when writing a proposal. I had to format the list of references alphabetically by author, and wasn't quite sure whether d'Alembert goes under "D" or "A".

Will Jagy comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10232)

Will Jagy — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:00:00 -0700

Oh, crap. I was not expecting that. You are simply too clever for me. And if you had put in enough explanation to remove all possibility of misinterpretation it would have weakened the joke, so there's no way around it...I put something like this as a comment after one of my MO questions, roughly that there was a American comedian named Red Skelton, if he found that nobody seemed to have gotten a joke he would say "I just do 'em, I don't explain 'em."

Grétar Amazeen comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10231)

Grétar Amazeen — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:32:44 -0700

Hi Will. Thanks for the info, but I think you misunderstood a rather silly joke on my behalf :) You asked " what would we do with d'Artagnan?" and I jokingly answered by capitalizing the d, and uncapitalizing the A.

Will Jagy comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10230)

Will Jagy — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:23:28 -0700

Hi, Gretar. Not a mathematician, fictional or otherwise. He's the young man who meets the three musketeers. Whenever I have heard the name pronounced it was a sort of dartan-yan sound, French and all. So I was thinking of d'Artagnanian as amusing.

Here we are, movie with Chris O'Donnell as d'Artagnan:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108333/

There have been many movies with that character, in many languages:
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0006263/

Grétar Amazeen comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10229)

Grétar Amazeen — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:12:43 -0700

D'artagnan?

Will Jagy comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10206)

Will Jagy — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:38:07 -0700

The MO question seems to be going well. With Georges' example in mind, what would we do with d'Artagnan?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Musketeers

Steve Huntsman comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10192)

Steve Huntsman — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 07:03:11 -0700

Posted: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/44946/why-is-abelian-infrequently-capitalized

Cam McLeman comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10186)

Cam McLeman — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 06:04:41 -0700

"God bless us, every Legendre's constant"

Well played, sir, well played.

deane.yang comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10185)

deane.yang — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 06:00:52 -0700

Steve's question is a good one. Is there really a rational explanation why it's "abelian", "noetherian", and "artinian" but "Euclidean", "Riemannian", and "Lorentzian"? The only pattern I see is that algebraists like to use lower case and the geometers like to capitalize.

Georges Elencwajg comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10175)

Georges Elencwajg — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 02:32:06 -0700

Dear Scott, the suggestion you mention is amusing if you know that Emil Artin's ancestors were Armenian and had as patronym "Artinian" which was then Germanized to "Artin". By the way Bourbaki is no help in this case because in French adjectives or adverbs derived from proper names are never capitalised: vous parlez français, un sénateur gaulliste, des coordonnées cartésiennes, un revêtement galoisien, et donc (obligatoirement) un anneau artinien et un groupe abélien. But if the adjective is used as a noun, it is capitalized: j'adore les Américains et les sites américains ( surtout l'un d'eux!).

Harry Gindi comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10174)

Harry Gindi — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 01:26:00 -0700

I think that if you can say X is (term) without the noun following it, it is generally left uncapitalized. So, notice, for instance, "the ring X is noetherian", "the ring X is artinian", "the group X is abelian", "the square F is cartesian", "the square F is cocartesian", etc.

dan petersen comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10173)

dan petersen — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 23:54:17 -0700

I've also heard the adjective rule before and seen people write e.g. "euclidean geometry" or "cartesian square" which seems nonstandard to me.

Gerry Myerson comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10171)

Gerry Myerson — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 23:04:15 -0700

As to whether the question is acceptable on MO, I'd be happier if it were broader, something along the lines of, "Are there any rules to determine whether mathematical concepts named after mathematicians should be capitalized?"

Scott Carnahan comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10170)

Scott Carnahan — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 20:21:25 -0700

I've heard professors suggest alternative conventions (consistent with "abelian" and "artinian"), e.g., don't capitalize when the name is modified to form an adjective. These seem somewhat inconsistent with current practice, though.

Ryan Budney comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10169)

Ryan Budney — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 19:45:23 -0700

If only you could patent 0, Will, you'd be rich.

The most interesting GR class I had was the day after I shaved my head, and Werner Israel decided to tell us about the "black holes have no hair" theorem.

Harry Gindi comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10168)

Harry Gindi — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 19:42:29 -0700

"God bless us, every Legendre's constant"

Will Jagy comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10167)

Will Jagy — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 19:23:13 -0700

God bless us, every one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legendre's_constant

Mariano comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10166)

Mariano — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 19:09:49 -0700

@Will, that puts you right there besides Legendre and his constant.

Will Jagy comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10165)

Will Jagy — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:51:34 -0700

Once in a class on general relativity we had maybe a dozen new tensors with names one day. I asked if I could have one named after me. My adviser nominated one, it turned out to be identically zero. Good times.

Harry Gindi comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10164)

Harry Gindi — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:32:56 -0700

@Cam:

Debacker told my class the same exact thing two years ago when he introduced us to some basic group theory. It is tradition that "abelian" is not capitalized.

Ryan Budney comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10163)

Ryan Budney — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:32:17 -0700

In my first abstract algebra course I remember the professor explaining it pretty much exactly as Cam says. Having something named after you is relatively common. But once you've become a part of the fabric of mathematics, your name starts to be uncapitalized.

Cam McLeman comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10162)

Cam McLeman — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:26:27 -0700

I remember a professor of mine once told me that if you became a famous mathematician, you got something named after you, and if you became REALLY famous, they'd do you the honor of uncapitalizing your name. Obviously this is not a highly-adopted convention (maybe "algorithm" counts? Have I seen "artinian"?), but amusing nonetheless.

Will Jagy comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10161)

Will Jagy — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:16:34 -0700

seems alright to me, I guess it's a question of how creepy the answers become. Do we usually capitalize Gaussian, Riemannian? Since it is no longer a proper name as such, maybe it depends on the fame of the individual. In effect, it may be the frequency of use of the name that reinforces the idea of capitalizing the adjective form.

Steve Huntsman comments on "Why is "abelian" infrequently capitalized?" (10160)

Steve Huntsman — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:47:44 -0700

Not much more to it than that. My spidey sense says it's poor form to ask a question like this but I can't fathom what to add by way of motivation or background.