I expect many of the Swedish names with W were either expatriated Germans=
and
others who moved to Sweden, and never got around to changing it to V, sin=
ce I
know in German W=3DV..
Not sure about why Waldenstrom is W, but likely they are Swedes who lived=
in
German or German territory at one time that is now part of Sweden, or the=
y moved
back to Sweden or ... I know alot of people used to speak German in that =
part of
Europe, as well as alot of Germans moved out for various reasons.
Daniel Andreasson wrote:
> Matt wrote:
>
> > Swedish alphabetises "v" and "w" as different versions of the same le=
tter.
> > This is not a problem when it comes to dictionaries, since so few Swe=
dish
> > words begin with "w" ("whiskey" is the only one I can think of), but =
it's
> > damn disconcerting when you're trying to look up proper names in the =
phone
> > book, or in a library card catalogue.
>
> Well, there is "worcesters=E5s", "wigwam" and some "wiener-" words (lik=
e
> "wienerbr=F6d", "wienklassicism" and "wienerschnitzel"). There's also
> "whist" (the card game), "wellpapp" and "walesare" and some more,
> but as you can see, all of them are borrowings.
>
> On the other hand, there are lots of Swedish surnames beginning with
> {w} (pronounced /v/) (Winberg, Werner, Waldenstr=F6m, etc) so I don't
> really understand why we count them as the same letter.
>
> -----------------
> Daniel Andreasson
> daniel@conlang.nu
>
http://conlang.nu (nothing new, don't check it out! ;)
>
http://hem1.passagen.se/noldo/roles.html (if you wanna check out
> my new case table (for those of you who were on vacation last time))
> -----------------
>
> PS. btw. "whiskey" is for some odd reason spelled "whisky" in Swedish.
> Don't ask me why. :)
>
> PS2. I really would have enjoyed to be on the translation relay
> since I missed the last/first one, but uniwork is taking all my
> time so I can't. (It's 1.55 am here, and guess what I'm doing...) *sob*=