• AcidSmiley [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    It will never stop being weird to me that you anglos just translate his first name to Frederick / Fred instead of going with Friedrich / Fritz, it's as if i was calling Biden and Stalin "Jupp" because that's the traditional short form for Joseph in the Rhineland.

    Wait i've actually called Stalin Jupp in the past nvm

    Edit: RIP my inbox lol

    these replies are actually really informative

    • ComradeRat [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      11 months ago

      Engels translated his own name as Fred actually

      We have evidence of this as early as the 1838-9 letters to his sister Marie (Engels was in the habit of using random bits of English even in his earliest letters).

      And it becomes more prominent ofc once he moves to England and lives there. Marx himself used 'Fred' to refer to Engels often, including in this Dec. 6 1868 letter

      Show

        • ComradeRat [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          11 months ago

          Afaik this is the transcription of the original letter rather than a translation (it can be found in MEWBand32). I'm not a German speaker, but my guess would be that any weirdness is a combination of:

          1. it being 19th century German;

          2. it might have traits of 19th century Rhineland dialect;

          3. it uses random English;

          4. it's a speedily written letter so may have errors

          Marx tends to use random English, French, Latin, Greek, Italian, etc words and grammar in his personal writings along with his own contractions in German, and just words he's made up

    • Duży Szef [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      11 months ago

      Honestly, here in Poland we use polonized names for the theorists and they were also polonized historically. Karol Marks, Fryderyk Engels, Włodzimierz Lenin, Józef Stalin and so on.

      Including even some soviet politicians and more people presumably, but most just have their names phoneticized for polish speakers. If a guy is of a Polish origin, it's guaranteed their name will be written fully in Polish. Like Feliks Dzierżyński and Róża Luksemburg for example.

      • AcidSmiley [she/her]
        ·
        11 months ago

        Really? I've regularly seen English translations on here where he's called that.

        • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]
          ·
          11 months ago

          actually reading source material? on my hexbear??

          (online I've also only seem Friedrich but I may have seen Frederick once or twice in print, I read books but not a lot of marx/engels lately)