Re: USAGE: Betreft: USAGE: surname prefixes

At 11:28 PM 4/20/2000, John Cowan wrote:
>What about "ter" as a surname prefix?  The press secretary of U.S. President
>Gerald Ford (1974-76) was named "Jerry ter Horst" and I remember hacking a
>surname-canonicalization subroutine to handle this case correctly.
For that matter, what about <vel>? I've only heard of this once: Reginald
velJohnson (not sure if there's a space there, or if vel is capitalized,
but I think neither), who played Karl on the show Family Matters. I find
that especially odd since it has a common English patronymic plus an
apparently foreign prefix.

Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo