Talk:Leif Ericson

From Academic Kids

I think Wikipedia should include the year of Leif's arrival in "Vinland". The year was what I was looking for when I came upon this page and I was very disapointed that even though I was cascaded with knowlegde about Leif Ericsson, it failed to mention the key purpose of my search-- the year. Please consider this and update your site with the date included. Thanks! -Marrissa

The problem with that, is that the year is not exactly known. I think 1001 is the 'average' estimate, but it is also sometimes placed one or two years earlier or later. Andre Engels 11:00, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

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Is there a standard historically-recognized name for this fellow? The spelling Leifur Eiríksson exists elsewhere on this site, and seems to me to be more authoritative. Perhaps a renaming of this article could be considered. Radagast

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Someone who might come to this page might have no idea that this article is about the person who is commonly known in English as "Leif Ericsson". I'm going to change the references back to "Leif Ericsson", move the page back, and make a note that his Norwegian name was "Leifur Eiríksson". Nohat 22:08, 2004 Apr 24 (UTC)

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As far as I'm concerned there was never a person called "Leif Ericsson". I do think we ought to use his real name. Biekko 22:19, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There was also never a person called Christopher Columbus, but certain historical figures have been given Anglicized names, and it's Wikipedia policy to use the most common English name to name pages. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). I've heard of Leif Ericsson but not "Leifur Eiríksson", and in the previous incarnation of the page, it wouldn't have been apparent to me that the article was about the same person we learned about in history class. It does seem that Leifur Eiríksson was his real name, and it is certainly important we indicate that, but the page title and references should be to the most common English name, which is Leif Ericsson. Nohat 22:33, 2004 Apr 24 (UTC)

However, as has been pointed out before there seems to be no single recognized name for the man. A quick websearch I did revealed these different variations of his last name all being used at once:

• Ericsson
• Ericson
• Eriksson
• Erickson
• Erikson
• Eiriksson

Even Britannica had two of these variations in its article titles, the name "Ericsson" has no authority over any of these, all of those should redirect to his native language name and these different spellings be explained there. Biekko 23:01, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

OK, you bring up a good point. I didn't double check the last name. I did Google searches on the following phrases, and these are the results:

Search phrase	result count
Leif Ericsson	11,000
Leif Ericson	23,300
Leif Eriksson	15,700
Leif Erickson	13,300
Leif Erikson	9,270
Leif Eiriksson	790
Leif Eiríksson	133
Leifur Ericsson	67
Leifur Ericson	6
Leifur Eriksson	240
Leifur Erickson	2
Leifur Erikson	28
Leifur Eiriksson	2,190
Leifur Eiríksson	1,730

As you can see, the versions with "Leif" are much more plentiful than "Leifur". The evidence for the last name is less clear, although it does seem to point to "Ericson", with 1 's', being the most common. I would then say that the most common English name is "Leif Ericson", and we should say in the first sentence that his Icelandic name was "Leifur Eiríksson", but we should include at least some of these others. It seems that "Erickson", "Eriksson", and "Ericsson" are all about equally common after "Ericson". Nohat 00:21, 2004 Apr 25 (UTC)

Ericson is probably closer to a proper English version of his name, his father was Eric and Leifur was his son, thus Ericson. The double 's' is however derived from the grammatics of Icelandic. If we are going to use this English name, then it should probably rather be with a single 's'. But I'm content as long as it is made clear to anybody who visits this page that his proper name was Leifur Eiríksson. :) Biekko 00:58, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

His proper name is no more Leifur Eiríksson than it is Leif Ericson, both are modernizations of Leifr Eiríksson. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (http://www.academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php?title=User_talk:%C6var_Arnfj%F6r%F0_Bjarmason&action=edit&section=new) 16:01, 2004 Dec 21 (UTC)

According to Thorkell Ericson, Leif's son also had the last name Ericson. Is this correct or was he really Thorkell Leifson or something like that? Nohat 04:47, 2004 Apr 25 (UTC)

Yes, he ought to be Leifsson if he really was Leifur's son. I need to do some research on this, I haven't yet been able to find any sources indicating that Leifur even had a son. This Thorkell Ericson article seems to be all wrong.Biekko 09:20, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The Google search doesn't take into account that many unrelated people are named Leif or Eriksson (or Ericsson etc). For example, "Peter Eriksson" gives some 70,000 hits. I do not think this search should carry any weight when choosing the name. Filur 06:48, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Contents

1 k or c 2 Revert 3 Ericsson instead of Ericson 4 Intro paragraph

k or c

The article about Erik the Red uses the k spelling but here the c spelling is used. For the sake of consistency this article should be moved to Leif Erikson or the one about Erik to Eric the Red. --Biekko 16:50, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Revert

I reverted Switisweti because he made a total mess of the article (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Leif_Ericson&diff=8678710&oldid=8612956) -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (http://www.academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php?title=User_talk:%C6var_Arnfj%F6r%F0_Bjarmason&action=edit&section=new) 15:50, 2004 Dec 21 (UTC)

Excuse me, but I just reverted YOUR edits, which were not in place since this is English Wikipedia, so you should use English equivalents of original (Icelandic, Old Norse) names. And please stop using non-English characters in this English text. <THORN> should be rendered "th" and <eth> should be rendered "d". Thank you very much. Switisweti 21:22, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

They were in place, we're discussion a topic which in which the persons discussed have names in old Icelandic or Old Norse, which means that we use whatever none-english characters needed when discussing their original names.

As for your claim that Þ should be rendered "th" and ð should be rendered "d" is simply untrue, please stop changing the relevant characters, it makes them unreadable. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (http://www.academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php?title=User_talk:%C6var_Arnfj%F6r%F0_Bjarmason&action=edit&section=new) 16:26, 2004 Dec 22 (UTC)

Changing those characters is completely unintentionally since my computer doesn't support them, renders them as <THORN> and <eth> whenever I change other parts of the article or this talk page and save these changes. Blaim Wikipedia-software. And please use English variants of those original names whenever you're talking plain English, though you may indeed mention their original form once or twice. Switisweti 22:16, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Actually you - or rather the software you're using to edit wikipedia is to blame, i presume that you're using internet explorer on mac os 9 which has a known problem with Þ and ð. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (http://www.academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php?title=User_talk:%C6var_Arnfj%F6r%F0_Bjarmason&action=edit&section=new) 17:55, 2004 Dec 25 (UTC)

Mac OS 9 and MSIE 5 are to blame. You're right. I'll stay away from the article. Switisweti 11:31, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

NN 7 has no problem with Þ and ð - as you can see. I repaired all I caused in this section. Switisweti 23:29, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ericsson instead of Ericson

This article should be titled "Leif Ericsson" with double s. No mather how often "Ericson" is indexed by Google. Those "Ericson"s are often sites that borough content from Wikipedia, so when we change the title to "Ericsson", in a few weeks "Ericson" will have been dropped in the Google ranking. After all, his name means "Eric's son" (see the double s), not "Eric-son". Switisweti 10:52, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

1. There was no evidence when I gathered those statistics that Wikipedia mirrors constituted a significant portion of the Google search results. Nohat 18:11, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Evidently there is also no evidence those mirrors did not constitute the main part of those results. Maybe you didn't take note of that possibility. Those mirrors should always be left out in such investigations. Now we don't have a clue about the quality of the results. And those results lead to the decission to keep the title with *son. Switisweti 11:11, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

2. Your logic is flawed. We don't have "Johnsson", "Fredericksson", "Wilsson", "Robertsson", "Jacobsson", etc. Nohat 18:11, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

In English language you may not find *sson (although I doubt that's the case, I don't know of any examples with *sson), but in many other germanic languages you do! In Dutch there is both "Jansen" and "Janssen", and this double s is very common in Danish, Norse and Swedish. In fact, an important telecompany is called "Ericsson" (!) with double ss. And since the original name of this explorer is "Eiríksson" we should stay close with "Ericsson". "Eirík" can be rendered "Eric" because otherwise there are problems with pronounciation, but *sson shouldn't be changed. But this my opinion, and if no others agree, I rest my case. Switisweti 10:59, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

BTW: One Google search gave me 602,000 examples of Internet use of "Johnsson", with double s! But now I really leave it to you, fellow Wikipedians. Switisweti 11:19, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Intro paragraph

Can someone rewrite the first paragraph so it is clear who Leif Ericson is and what his importance is? As it is now, we only know that he is a Viking, and then there's information about his genealogy. We only know that he's an explorer after reading the whole article. 202.152.46.130 03:32, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)