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Eugène Ysaÿe

Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe (16 July 1858 – 12 May 1931) was a Belgian virtuoso violinist, composer, and conductor. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tsar".

Legend of the Ysaÿe violin
Eugène Ysaÿe came from a background of "artisans", though a large part of his family played instruments. As violinist Arnold Steinhardt recounts, a legend was passed down through the Ysaÿe family about the first violin brought to the lineage:

It was told of a boy whom some woodcutters found in the forest and brought to the village. The boy grew up to be a blacksmith. Once, at a village festival, he astonished everyone by playing the viol beautifully. From then on the villagers took pleasure in dancing and singing to the strains of his viol. One day an illustrious stranger stopped in front of the smithy to have his horse shod. The count's servant saw the viol inside and told the young smith that he had heard a new Italian instrument played by some minstrels at the count's court. That instrument, called the violin, was much better than the viol – its tone was like the human voice and could express every feeling and passion. From that moment the young man no longer took pleasure in his viol. Day and night he was thinking of that wonderful new instrument that could express joy and sorrow and whose tones went straight to the human heart. Then he had a dream: he saw before him a young woman of indescribable beauty, not unlike his own love, Biethline. She came to him and kissed his brow. The young man awoke and looked at the wall his broken and neglected viol used to hang on and could barely believe his eyes: there, instead of the viol, was a new instrument of beautiful proportions. He put it against his shoulder and drew the bow over the strings, producing sounds that were truly divine. The violin sang in a heartwarming tone: it rejoiced and wept for happiness – and so did the musician. Thus, goes the legend, came the first violin to the Ardennes and to the Ysaÿe family.

Early years
Born in Liège, Ysaÿe began violin lessons at age five with his father. He would later recognize his father's teaching as the foundation of everything he knew on his instrument, even though he went on to study with highly reputed masters. In 1867, Ysaÿe entered the Royal Conservatory of Liège to study with Désiré Heynberg, and in the process won a shared second prize with the Viotti 22nd Violin Concerto. He then went on to study with Henryk Wieniawski for two years in Brussels and Henri Vieuxtemps in Paris.

Studying with these teachers meant that he was part of the so-called Franco-Belgian school of violin playing, which dates back to the development of the modern violin bow by François Tourte. Qualities of this "École" included elegance, a full tone with a sense of drawing a "long" bow with no jerks, precise left hand techniques, and bowing using the whole forearm while keeping both the wrist and upper arm quiet (as opposed to Joseph Joachim's German school of wrist bowing and Leopold Auer's Russian concept of using the whole arm.)

Early career
After his graduation from the Royal Conservatory of Liège, Ysaÿe was the principal violin of the Benjamin Bilse beer-hall orchestra, which later developed into the Berlin Philharmonic. Many musicians of note and influence came regularly to hear this orchestra and Ysaÿe in particular, among them Joseph Joachim, Franz Liszt, Clara Schumann, and Anton Rubinstein, who asked that Ysaÿe be released from his contract to accompany him on tour.

When Ysaÿe was 27 years old, he was recommended as a soloist for one of the Concerts Colonne in Paris, which was the start of his great success as a concert artist. The next year, Ysaÿe received a professorship at the Brussels Conservatoire. His teaching career continued for the rest of his life, even after he left the Conservatory in 1898. Among his notable pupils were Josef Gingold, the viola virtuoso William Primrose, the violin virtuoso Nathan Milstein (who primarily studied with Pyotr Stolyarsky), Oskar Back, Ernest Bloch, Jascha Brodsky, Mathieu Crickboom, George Enescu, Aldo Ferraresi, Jonny Heykens, Nellie A. Hope, Charles Houdret, Julia Klumpke, Louis Persinger, Oscar Shumsky, and Jacques Thibaud.

During his tenure as professor at the Conservatoire, Ysaÿe continued to tour ever more widely, visiting all of Europe, Russia, and the United States. Despite health concerns, particularly regarding the condition of his hands, Ysaÿe was at his best when performing, and many prominent composers dedicated major works to him, including Claude Debussy, Camille Saint-Saëns, César Franck, and Ernest Chausson. He arranged for violin and orchestra Saint-Saëns's Étude en forme de valse, which had originally been written for solo piano.

Franck's Violin Sonata in A was written as a wedding present for Ysaÿe and his wife in 1886. Ysaÿe played it often for the rest of his life. Chausson's Poème was his response to Ysaÿe's request for a concerto. Joseph Szigeti thought those two dedications demonstrated the enormous respect in which Ysaÿe was held.

In 1886, he established the Ysaÿe Quartet, which premiered Debussy's String Quartet.

Teaching and composing
As his physical ailments grew more prohibitive, Ysaÿe turned more to teaching, conducting and an early love, composition. Among his most famous works are the six Sonatas for Solo Violin op. 27, the unaccompanied Sonata for Cello, op. 28, one Sonata for Two Violins, eight Poèmes for various instruments (one or two violins, violin and cello, string quartet) and orchestra (Poème élégiaque, Poème de l'Extase, Chant d'hiver, Poème nocturne, among others), pieces for string orchestra without basses (including Exil), several violin concertos, various shorter pieces for violin and piano, two string trios, an early string quintet, and an opera, Peter the Miner, written near the end of his life in the Walloon language.

Ysaÿe had been offered the post of music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1898, but declined it due to his busy solo performance schedule. In 1918, he accepted the music director's position with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, where he remained until 1922 and with which he made several recordings.

Finally, in 1931, suffering from the extreme ravages of diabetes that had necessitated the amputation of his left foot, Eugène Ysaÿe died in his house in Forest, Belgium, 48 Avenue Brugmann, and was interred in the Ixelles Cemetery in Brussels.

Performing career

As a performer, Ysaÿe was compelling and highly original. Pablo Casals claimed never to have heard a violinist play in tune before Ysaÿe, and Carl Flesch called him "the most outstanding and individual violinist I have ever heard in my life."

Ysaÿe possessed a large and flexible tone, influenced by a considerable variety of vibrato — from no vibrato at all to very intense. He said, "Don't always vibrate, but always be vibrating". His modus operandi was, in his own words: "Nothing which wouldn't have for goal emotion, poetry, heart." The conductor Sir Henry Wood said, "The quality of tone was ravishingly beautiful.... He seemed to get more colour out of a violin than any of his contemporaries."

Possibly the most distinctive feature of Ysaÿe's interpretations was his masterful rubato (in English: "stolen"). Sir Henry Wood said, "Whenever he stole time from one note, he faithfully paid it back within four bars", allowing his accompanist to maintain strict tempo under his free cantilena. Incidentally, this kind of rubato fits the description of Frédéric Chopin's rubato.

Although Ysaÿe was a great interpreter of late Romantic and early modern composers — Max Bruch, Camille Saint-Saëns, and César Franck, who said he was their greatest interpreter — he was admired for his Bach and Beethoven interpretations. His technique was brilliant and finely honed, and in this respect he is the first modern violinist whose technique was without the shortcomings of some earlier artists.

An international violin competition in Brussels was created in his memory: in 1951, this became the violin section of the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition.

Personal life

Ysaÿe was married twice. His first marriage, on 28 September 1886 in Arlon, was to Louise Bourdau (from Dendermonde), with whom he had three sons and two daughters: Gabriel (1887–1961), Carry (1889–1930), Thérèse called Thésy (1890–1956), Antoine (1894–1979) and Théodore (1898–1934). César Franck presented his Violin Sonata in A to them as a gift on the morning of the wedding, and after a hurried rehearsal Ysaÿe performed the piece at the marriage celebration. The sonata had its formal concert premiere in Brussels on 15 December 1886 with Franck in the audience.

After Louise's death (9 February 1924) he married a pupil of his, Jeanette Dincin (1902–1967), 44 years his junior. She was a violinist who in her teens had studied with prominent teachers such as Franz Kneisel, Leopold Auer, and Otakar Ševčík. Ysaÿe met her in 1922 while conductor of the Cincinnati Orchestra. She cared for him in his ailing years. Eugène's only request of her after he died was that she carry on her performances under his name.

His brother was pianist and composer Théo Ysaÿe (1865–1918), and his great-grandson is Marc Ysaÿe, founder-controller of radio Classic 21 and drummer of rock band Machiavel. Eugène Ysaÿe was also close friends with Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, whom he taught violin despite her lack of talent. His widow took over the royal teaching herself after his death, and the queen began the competition in his honor. His granddaughter, Nadine Ysaye Mosbaugh, was a noted concert pianist who toured Europe with José Iturbi before settling down in Canada. She also hosted and performed on a classical radio program on CKAR Radio in Huntsville, Ontario. Ysaÿe's great-grandson, Franc Mosbaugh, is a Canadian musician/singer and award-winning commercial jingle composer.

Ysaÿe was also a friend of Claude Debussy and would sometimes correspond with him by letter. The two had great respect for each other and Ysaÿe was a significant supporter of the younger composer's early career. Debussy dedicated his only string quartet to the violinist, who studied the score with great care. The quartet received its premiere on 29 December 1893 by the Ysaÿe Quartet at the Société Nationale in Paris, to mixed reviews. The virtuoso and the composer also corresponded during the writing of Debussy's Nocturnes.

The Eugène Ysaÿe Collection
The Eugène Ysaÿe Collection, housed in the Music Division of the Royal Library of Belgium, combines four decades of purchases with a donation made by the Ysaÿe family in 2007. An essential source for the study of musician's life and works, it includes some 700 letters and autograph scores, over 1,000 printed scores and books, abundant collection of photographs, four films, and about fifty 78 RPM and 33 RPM recordings. A second collection of handwritten and printed scores is conserved in New York at the Juilliard School.

Honours

 * 1900: Officer in the Order of Leopold.
 * 1919: Commander of the Order of Leopold.

Works for solo violin

 * 6 Sonatas for solo violin, Op. 27 (each dedicated to a different famous violinist and written in their corresponding styles)
 * Sonata No. 1 ("Joseph Szigeti")
 * Sonata No. 2 ("Jacques Thibaud")
 * Sonata No. 3 ("Georges Enescu")
 * Sonata No. 4 ("Fritz Kreisler")
 * Sonata No. 5 ("Mathieu Crickboom")
 * Sonata No. 6 ("Manuel Quiroga")
 * 10 Preludes (Exercises for violin), Op. 35
 * Étude posthume
 * Cadenza for Beethoven, Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, 1st mov. (1888–89)
 * Cadenza for Mozart, Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K. 216, 1st, 2nd and 3rd mov.
 * Cadenza for Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, 1st mov.
 * Cadenza for Brahms, Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77, 1st mov.

Works for violin and piano

 * Scènes Sentimentales (1885) [ms discovered in 2012]
 * 2 Mazurkas de Salon, Op.10 (c.1893)
 * Dans le lointain (Tempo di Mazurka)
 * Mazurka, in A minor (Moderato) [orchestrated by Allan Wilson]
 * Lointain passé, Mazurka No.3 in B minor, Op.11 (1893)
 * Petite fantaisie romantique (c.1901)
 * Poème élégiaque, for violin and piano (1892/3) [revised as Poème No.1 in D minor, for violin and orchestra, Op.12]
 * Rêve d'enfant, in A-flat major, for violin and piano (or orchestra) Op.14
 * Untitled piece in F-sharp minor (c.1912) [ms discovered in 2012, ending missing, completed and entitled Élégie, by Sherban Lupu]
 * Trois Études-Poèmes (completed 1924) [mss discovered in 2012]
 * Sérénade, in G minor (Allegretto poco scherzando) [ms piano part missing, piano accompaniment written by Sabin Pautza]
 * Au ruisseau (Poco lento)
 * Cara memoria, in E-flat minor (Molto moderato alla marcia funèbre)
 * "Paganini Variations", on 24th Caprice (published 1960)
 * "Caprice after the Study in the form of a Waltz, Op. 52/6" (composed by Camille Saint-Saëns, arranged by Ysaÿe)
 * Deux célèbres Arias (composed by J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel, arranged by Ysaÿe)
 * Waltz in E minor Op.posth. [KKIVa/15] (composed by Frédéric Chopin, arranged by Ysaÿe)
 * Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23 (composed by Frédéric Chopin, arranged by Ysaÿe)
 * Légende norvégienne.

Chamber works

 * String Quintet, in B minor, for 2 violins, 2 violas and cello "à mon frère Théophile" (1894) [Grave et lent – Allegro] [later arranged for violin and piano/orchestra Op.15]
 * Sonata for solo cello, in C minor, Op.28 (1924) [1. Grave; 2. Intermezzo; 3. In modo di Recitativo; 4. Finale. Con brio]
 * Sonata for two violins, in A minor, Op. posth. (1915) [1. Poco lento, maestoso – Allegro fermo; 2. Allegretto poco lento; 3. Finale. Allegro vivo e con fuoco)
 * String Trio No.1, Op. 33, a.k.a. "Le Chimay" (1927) [Molto lento – Allegro non troppo – Lento ben sostenuto – Allegro non-troppo – Allegro poco presto]
 * String Trio No.2, Op. 34 (1927) [Allegro assai – Lento]
 * Trio “Le Londres” for 2 violins and viola
 * String Quartet
 * "Paganini Variations" for String Quartet

Orchestral works

 * Brabançonne in D major, for orchestra (1918)
 * Exil, for string orchestra without double basses, Op.25 (1917)

Concertante works

 * Poème élégiaque (Poème No.1) in D minor, for violin and orchestra Op.12 (1902/3) [orchestrated by Jacques Ysaye]
 * Au rouet (Poème No.2), for violin and orchestra, Op.13
 * Chant d'hiver (Poème No.3), in B minor, for violin and orchestra (or piano), Op.15 (1902) [same music of String Quintet]
 * Méditation, for cello and orchestra, Op.16
 * Violin Concerto No.?, in G minor, for violin and orchestra, Op.17 (1893,1901,1908,1910) [mss discovered in 2012, reconstructed from 4 ms versions by Sherban Lupu and orchestrated by Sabin Pautza in 2017]
 * Berceuse, in F minor, for violin and orchestra, Op.20
 * Extase (Poème No.4), for violin and orchestra, Op.21 (dedicated to Mischa Elman)
 * Sérénade, for cello and orchestra, Op.22
 * Les neiges d'antan (Poème No.5), for violin and orchestra, Op.23 (1911)
 * Divertimento, for violin and orchestra (or piano) Op.24 (1921) [1. Molto moderato; 2. Allegro non-troppo vivo]
 * Amitié (Poème No.6), for 2 violins and orchestra, Op.26
 * Poème nocturne (Poème No.7), for violin, cello and orchestra, Op.29
 * Harmonies du soir (Poème No.8), for string quartet and orchestra, Op.31
 * Fantasia, for violin and orchestra, Op.32
 * Violin Concerto No.8 (orchestrated by Jacques Ysaÿe) [I. Grave e lento poco mesto; II. Andante non-troppo; III. (with no tempo indication)]
 * Violin Concerto No.?, in E minor, for violin and orchestra [I. Allegro appassionato non troppo vivo]
 * Saltarelle carnavalesque, in A minor, for violin and orchestra (or piano), Op.posth

Operas

 * Piére li houyeû (Pierre le mineur) 1931 (Original in Walloon language, perhaps the only opera composed for a libretto in that language)

 * The première of Piére li houyeû (the composer's only opera) took place at the Opéra de Liège on 4 March 1931, during a long evening dedicated to the composer's works, in the presence of Queen Elisabeth of Belgium who had been his pupil. Ysaÿe, very ill with diabetes, listened to the performance from his hospital room. The Queen, informed of the seriousness of Ysaÿe's condition, had organised a radio broadcast of the work and Ysaÿe addressed the audience from his room. The work was then performed in Brussels on 25 April. Ysaÿe, transported on a stretcher to a box in the theater, was able to view the performance. He died 18 days later.

The critics were appreciative but the opera did not find a place in the standard repertoire. It was performed again by Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liege, 25 November 2006. This performance was recorded and is published by the non-profit association in a two CD set accompanied by a book containing the Walloon text and its French, Dutch and English translations, and introductory texts in French, Dutch, German and English. The story is based on an incident that occurred in 1877 during a miners' strike in the Liège region. During clashes with the police, some shots were fired. The wife of a foreman rushed forward to seize a grenade which had been placed in the offices by a striker, but the grenade exploded and she was killed.

 * L’avièrge di pièr (La vierge de pierre) – not completed, not performed

A complete list of available orchestral works, including concerto works, is available on the Symphony Orchestra Library Center.

Selected discography
[Released on CD, Sony Classical MHK 62337, 1996]

Camille de Creus, piano accompaniment
Source:
 * R. Wagner: Prize Song from Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg, recorded 1 Feb.1912
 * E. Chabrier: Pièce pittoresque No.10 from Scherzo-Valse, recorded 20 Dec.1912
 * R. Schumann: Abendlied, Op.85, No.12 by Schumann, recorded 24 Dec.1912
 * H. Wieniawski: Obertass, Mazurka Op.19, No.1 in G major, recorded 26 Dec.1912
 * H. Wieniawski: Dudziarz, Mazurka Op.19, No.2 in D major, recorded 26 Dec.1912
 * G. Fauré: Berceuse Op.16, recorded 27 Dec.1912
 * F. Mendelssohn: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E minor Op.64 (III: Allegro molto vivace), recorded 27 Dec.1912
 * H. Vieuxtemps: Rondino Op.32, No.2, recorded 30 Dec.1912
 * J. Brahms: Hungarian Dance No.5, in F-sharp minor (arr. Joachim), recorded 30 Dec.1912
 * F. Kreisler: Caprice Viennois, Op.2, recorded 30 Dec.1912
 * R. Wagner: Albumblatt in C major, recorded 30 Dec.1912
 * E. Ysaÿe: Lointain passé, Mazurka No.3 in B minor Op.11, recorded 1 Feb.1913
 * E. Ysaÿe: Rêve d'Enfant Op.14, recorded 1 Feb.1913
 * A. Dvořák: Humoresque in G-flat major Op.101, No.7 (arr. Kreisler), recorded 9 Mar.1914
 * F. Schubert: Ave Maria D.839, recorded 9 Mar.1914
 * E. Chabrier: Marche Joyeuse, recorded 30 Nov.1919

Conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, recorded 28 Nov 1919

 * L. Delibes: Intermezzo from 'Naila' (Pas Des Fleurs, Grande Valse)
 * Aimé Maillart: Overture to Les Dragons De Villars
 * J. Massenet: Navarraise from 'Le Cid', by Massenet
 * Eduard Lassen: Festival Overture
 * E. Chabrier: Marche Joyeuse
 * N. Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade
 * J. Offenbach: Orpheus in Hades

title: Eugène Ysaÿe


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Rod Langway

Rodney Cory Langway (born May 3, 1957) is an American former professional ice hockey defenseman who played for the Montreal Canadiens and Washington Capitals in the National Hockey League (NHL) and Birmingham Bulls of the World Hockey Association (WHA). He won the 1979 Stanley Cup with the Canadiens.

Langway also spent time with teams in the American Hockey League (AHL) and East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) as a player-coach after his NHL career ended. A two-time winner of the James Norris Memorial Trophy as the top defenseman in the NHL, Langway was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2002.

Early life and amateur career
Langway was born to a US military family in Taipei, Taiwan, and is the only NHL player to have been born there. He grew up in Randolph, Massachusetts, and did not begin playing hockey until age 13 in 1970, aside from pick-up street hockey games with the neighborhood boys. He then led Randolph High School to three straight state tournament appearances in 1973, 1974 and 1975. He was also a standout quarterback for the Blue Devils and was one of the top football recruits in the nation. As a catcher on the Randolph High baseball team, Langway was considered a baseball pro-prospect. He was an honor student. However, the top college football programs in the country had identified Langway as a future NFL quarterback. It was a football recruiter from the University of New Hampshire who convinced him to play college hockey at UNH, one of the few schools that would allow him to play both football and hockey in college, which he did without having to choose one over the other as an incoming freshman. Langway went on to lead UNH to the NCAA hockey final four in 1977. Ultimately, hockey ended up being the direction for him as a professional career. He was inducted into the Randolph High and UNH Athletic Halls of Fame.

Professional career
A left-handed shot, Langway was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens of the NHL in 1977 and by the Birmingham Bulls of the WHA in the same year. He played one season for the Bulls (1977–78) before joining the Canadiens for the 1978–79 NHL season. He was 22 years old when he helped the Canadiens win the Stanley Cup that year. He played for Montreal until he was traded to the Washington Capitals for the start of the 1982–83 season.

The Capitals acquired Langway from the Canadiens in a blockbuster trade—going with Doug Jarvis, Craig Laughlin, and Brian Engblom in exchange for Ryan Walter and Rick Green. That trade not only saved the franchise from moving out of D.C., but also stocked them for an extended string of postseason appearances. After not making the playoffs in their first eight seasons in the league, the Capitals competed in the postseason in every one of the 11 years that Langway was with the team. Following that trade, the Capitals named Langway their captain (succeeding the aforementioned Ryan Walter), which he would hold for the next 11 seasons until his NHL retirement.

As captain, Langway became known as an accomplished leader who demanded greatness from himself and others, earning the nickname "Secretary of Defense". Many people considered him the franchise's savior, despite not being the sort of player that one would expect to prevent the club from moving. Langway's predecessors as Norris Trophy winners were the dominant defensemen of the 1970s, like Bobby Orr, Larry Robinson, and Denis Potvin, who had put up high scoring numbers. By contrast, Langway was a traditional defender whose shot was likened to a "cool summer breeze", scoring only three goals during one of his best seasons, though he is remembered by Capitals fans for a game–winning goal in overtime against the New York Rangers' Mike Richter in the 1990 playoffs. Despite his lack of offensive production, his excellence at his position was credited with significantly reducing the Capitals' goals-against average, which enabled them to finally make the playoffs.

Langway won the Norris Trophy as the NHL's top defenseman in both 1983 and 1984. He earned two postseason All-Star first team selections and one Second Team selection as a defenseman—the first American NHL All-Star since Frank Brimsek in 1948. Langway finished runner-up to Wayne Gretzky for the Hart Memorial Trophy in 1984. He was also part of the NHL All-Star team that played the Soviet national hockey team in Rendez-Vous '87. Upon his retirement from the NHL during the 1992–93 season, Langway was the last active player who won a Stanley Cup with the Montreal Canadiens during their late-70s dynasty. In international hockey, he represented the United States in the 1981, 1984, and 1987 Canada Cup as well as the 1982 Ice Hockey World Championship tournaments.

Coaching career
Langway served as player-coach for the San Francisco Spiders during their single season as an IHL team in 1995–1996. Langway began his career before helmets were mandatory and was the only member of the Spiders who played without a helmet under a league grandfather clause. He played without a helmet even while he was playing for the Washington Capitals and was normally the only player on the ice who was not wearing a helmet.

Langway was also an assistant coach under Tom McVie with the American Hockey League's Providence Bruins during the 1997–98 season. He played in ten games that year to assist with on-ice development, during which time he was not granted an exemption to play without a helmet. Providence finished with a mere 19 victories that season, and Langway did not return the following year after McVie was reassigned to be a scout by the Boston organization.

During the 2003–04 season, Langway coached the Richmond Riverdogs expansion franchise in the United Hockey League to a division championship, and a first-round playoff loss to the Elmira Jackals. Team management did not extend Langway's contract after the first season.

Awards and accomplishments

 * Stanley Cup champion – 1979
 * Norris Trophy: 1982–83, 1983–84
 * NHL All-Star first team: 1982–83, 1983–84
 * NHL All-Star second team: 1984–85
 * All-Star Game: 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986
 * Canada Cup 1984 All-Star first team

Langway's jersey number (#5) was retired by the Washington Capitals on November 26, 1997, and he was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1999. His career was crowned with his election to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2012, he was inducted into the World Hockey Association Hall of Fame in the “Legends of the Game” category.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Rod Langway


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John Machin

John Machin (bapt. c. 1686 – June 9, 1751) was a professor of astronomy at Gresham College, London. He is best known for developing a quickly converging series for pi in 1706 and using it to compute pi to 100 decimal places.

History
John Machin served as secretary of the Royal Society from 1718 to 1747. He was also a member of the commission which decided the Calculus priority dispute between Leibniz and Newton in 1712.

On 16 May 1713 he succeeded Alexander Torriano as professor of astronomy in Gresham College, and held the post until his death, which occurred in London on 9 June 1751. Machin enjoyed a high mathematical reputation. His ingenious quadrature of the circle was investigated by Hutton, and in 1706 Machin computed the value of π by Halley's method to one hundred decimal places. A mass of his manuscripts is preserved by the Royal Astronomical Society; and writing to William Jones in 1727, he asserted his claim to the parliamentary reward of £10,000 for amending the lunar tables.

In 1728, he was listed as one of the subscribers to the Cyclopaedia of Ephraim Chambers.

Formula
Machin's formula (for which the derivation is straightforward) is:

 * $$\frac{\pi}{4} = 4 \arctan \frac{1}{5} - \arctan \frac{1}{239}$$

The benefit of the new formula, a variation on the Gregory–Leibniz series ($\pi⁄4$ = arctan 1), was that it had a significantly increased rate of convergence, which made it a much more practical method of calculation.

To compute π to 100 decimal places, he combined his formula with the Taylor series expansion for the inverse tangent. (Brook Taylor was Machin's contemporary in Cambridge University.) Machin's formula remained the primary tool of pi-hunters for centuries (well into the computer era).

Several other Machin-like formulae are known.

title: John Machin


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Dale Hunter

Dale Robert Hunter (born July 31, 1960) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player and the former head coach of the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League and current co-owner, president, and head coach of the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League. He was born in Petrolia, Ontario, but grew up in nearby (13 km) Oil Springs, Ontario. He is the middle of three Hunter brothers, with older brother Dave and younger brother Mark, to play in the NHL.

Quebec Nordiques
He was selected 41st overall by the Quebec Nordiques in the 1979 NHL Entry Draft. He would begin his NHL career a year later in 1980 and played seven years with the Nordiques.

According to his former Quebec Nordiques coach Michel Bergeron, even though Hunter was nicknamed the "Nuisance" on ice (La Petite Peste in French), he was known to be "humble" in the dressing room and a sort of "gentleman", close to all the players. He was the "perfect player", always the first to arrive at practice and ready to do all his best for the team. Thanks to his charisma, Hunter was a fan favourite in both Quebec and Washington. His leaving Quebec was seen as an obvious "mistake" linked to the team's future decline.

At the end of the, Hunter was traded to the Washington Capitals along with Clint Malarchuk in return for Gaetan Duchesne, Alan Haworth, and a 1987 first-round draft pick the Nordiques then used to select future Hall of Famer Joe Sakic.

Washington Capitals
Hunter played for 12 seasons with the Washington Capitals, serving as team captain from 1994 to 1999.

In the 1988 Patrick Division Semifinals between the Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers, Hunter scored one of the biggest goals in Caps history. That goal was scored on a breakaway at 5:57 of overtime, beating Ron Hextall and gave Washington the 5–4 win in the deciding game 7.

During the 1991–92 Washington Capitals season, younger brother Mark briefly joined Hunter with the Capitals, playing seven games with the club.

In the 1993 Patrick Division Semifinals between the Capitals and New York Islanders, Hunter led his team with seven postseason goals. That performance was marred by an illegal and potentially career-ending check on Islanders' star Pierre Turgeon. This illegal check occurred after Turgeon had stolen an errant pass of Hunter's and subsequently scored. As Turgeon was celebrating, Hunter came up from behind and checked the unaware Turgeon into the boards, leading to a concussion and a separated right shoulder. As a result of the incident, Hunter was suspended for the first 21 games of the 1993–94 season as part of new commissioner Gary Bettman's effort to crack down on violent play.

He played in the 1997 NHL All-Star Game.

Hunter broke the 1,000 points barrier during the, becoming the NHL record holder for requiring the most games to do so by a forward, at 1,308; the record stood until Patrick Marleau achieved the feat in his 1,349th game, during the. Hunter holds the record for the player with the most penalty minutes to have scored 1,000 or more points.

In 1998, he led the fourth-seeded Capitals to their first appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals, defeating the Boston Bruins, Ottawa Senators, and Buffalo Sabres in the earlier rounds. In the finals, the Capitals were swept by the defending Cup champion Detroit Red Wings, with the first three games being decided by one goal.

In March 1999, at the trade deadline for the, Hunter was traded back to his original franchise, albeit since relocated and renamed the Colorado Avalanche.

Colorado Avalanche
Hunter finished the 1998–99 season with the Colorado Avalanche, the successor to the Nordiques. He helped the team reach that season's Western Conference finals, losing in seven games to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Dallas Stars. On that team, he often played on the same line as two other renowned pest role players – Claude Lemieux and Theoren Fleury.

Hunter retired at the end of that playoff run, after 19 full seasons in the NHL.

Post-NHL
Hunter's sweater number (#32) was retired by the Capitals on March 11, 2000. During the ceremony, the Capitals presented Hunter with one of the penalty boxes from the Capital Centre (the Capitals former home arena), symbolic of his exceptional amount of time served for penalties.

In 2000, Hunter and his brother, Mark—also a former NHL player—teamed up with Dale's former teammate on the Nordiques, Basil McRae, to buy the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League. Dale became team president and head coach. He led the Knights to the 2005 and 2016 Memorial Cup. On January 1, 2006, the Hunter brothers were named to the 2006 Mayor's New Year's Honours List for Sports by the City of London, Ontario. Hunter's older brother Dave Hunter is also a former NHLer. His son Dylan Hunter is an assistant coach for the Knights and his other son Tucker also played for the London Knights before pursuing his education at the University of Western Ontario.

On November 28, 2011, Hunter resigned his position as head coach of the Knights to take the same position with the Washington Capitals, succeeding Bruce Boudreau. His brother Mark then took over as Knights coach. Hunter's defense oriented system caused some conflict with star Alexander Ovechkin but it helped the struggling Capitals make the playoffs, where they upset the defending Stanley Cup champions Boston Bruins in the first round before being eliminated by the New York Rangers, both postseason series going to seven games. On May 14, 2012, Hunter announced he was not returning to coach the Capitals in the 2012-2013 season, choosing instead to return to the London Knights.

On May 14, 2019, Hockey Canada named Hunter as the head coach for Canada’s National Junior Team at the 2020 IIHF World Junior Championship. Hunter guided the team to the gold medal with a dramatic come-from-behind victory over Russia in the final game.

Accolades and controversy
With amassing a staggering 3565 penalty minutes, Hunter currently has the second-most penalty minutes in NHL history, after Dave "Tiger" Williams (although Hunter played 1,407 games to Williams' 962). He also holds the NHL record for most penalty minutes in the playoffs, at 731. The Capitals retired his No. 32 jersey. Hunter is the only NHL player ever to score over 1,000 points and rack up over 3,000 penalty minutes (1,020 points and 3,565 PIMs over 1,407 NHL games).

He scored in overtime for Quebec in Game 5 of their 1982 opening round best-of-five series vs. the Montreal Canadiens, and in 1988 scoring against Ron Hextall on a breakaway in overtime for Washington in Game 7 of their opening round best-of-7 series vs. the Philadelphia Flyers, making Hunter the first player in NHL history to score two overtime series-clinching goals in the playoffs.

In July 2006, Hunter was arrested and charged with DUI. The charges were dropped when the presiding judge ruled that his rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms were violated for unlawful detention and being denied his right to his lawyer.

In September 2005, Hunter was suspended by the Ontario Hockey League for four games after a player left the bench to initiate a fight in an exhibition game.

On January 20, 2006, Hunter was suspended for two games and his team was fined $5,000 for Hunter's off ice abuse of the officials. In May 2006, Hunter was fined $5,000 by the OHL for criticizing officials after the Knights were eliminated from the playoffs in four straight games. In September 2006, Hunter was suspended by the OHL for two games after forward Matt Davis left the bench to engage in a fight during a game; OHL rules state that there is an automatic suspension for both the player and the coach if a player leaves the bench to become involved in an altercation.

Pierre Turgeon incident
Late in the deciding Game 6 of the 1993 Patrick Division Semifinals between the Capitals and New York Islanders, Pierre Turgeon stole the puck from Hunter and scored, putting the game out of reach. Hunter, who was trailing Turgeon on the play, checked Turgeon from behind well after the goal as he started to celebrate. Turgeon sustained a separated shoulder from the hit, causing him to miss all but Game 7 against the Pittsburgh Penguins in the second round, as well as most of the series against the Montreal Canadiens in the conference finals. New NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, who had earlier promised to crack down on violence, suspended Hunter for the first 21 games of the 1993–94 season—at the time, the longest suspension in league history for an on-ice incident (in terms of games missed).

Career statistics
Bold italics indicates NHL record

title: Dale Hunter


text:
Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 1

Old text
Q: Should you link every occurance of a term or just the first one in an article?

A. I'm in favor of link the first occurence in an article and then any one in the 'see also' section at the end of the article.

A2. I think we should link the first occurrence, any one in the 'see also' and maybe one more, if it seems sensible for some reason. I also think that we should spell 'occurrence' in as many different ways as possible. ;-) --Jimbo Wales|

A3. I'm strongly in favor of agressive linking: all occurences of a word should be links, particularily for long pages. All words that have articles (or should) that are remotely relevant to the article should be links. Of course not everybody should have to do this, but I think it should be encouraged. --Aidan

Q2: If this system is on a UNIX box, is it possible to shell out and do a 'spell' as an option from the page? I concur, it should be required to spell occurrence in a unique way each time it is used :).

When writing that Albert Einstein was a physicist (see Albert Einstein, physicist, scientist, Biography, and talk:Biography for this discussion) it was tempting to create a link to a page listing various physicists through history, and pointing out that all physicists are also scientists. One issue is whether these pages should have pluralized names (addressed above). Another issue is whether the structure or catalog of professions should be created before we start writing biographies of other scientists, like a coordinate system is drawn before the data points are plotted. Such catalogs could be: professions, academic disciplines, timelines (like the excellent one on geologic ages), families of biological species, types of organic chemic substances, etc. The risk with such an approach is that the catalogs will dominate over the substance contents (Yahoo without the Internet). The risk with not taking such an approach is that a lot of useful links will be missing from entries (the Internet without Yahoo).

Any thoughts?

 * Hmm, only occasionally have I been a bit bothered when someone has put up a long list of links without full sentences about the subject of the article. Yes, I don't think Wikipedia should be a list of links, external or internal.  On the other hand, lists of links are great and absolutely necessary in a hypertext encyclopedia, so we gotta have 'em.  I just think we should discourage the idea that an adequate article might consist just of the links.  E.g., I still think actress should address the phenomena that are actresses, and not just give a list of actresses (as if people visiting the "actress" page were interested only in finding their favorite actress.

 * My conclusion is that unless there's a really striking problem (as, in my opinion, the existence of many mere-dictionary type entries was becoming), it's not worth it to discourage anyone from doing anything. The beauty of Wikipedia is that, by being open to all manner of contributions, everyone wants to contribute.  It's great that way. --LMS

Q. Plural links. In Naming conventions, the example shows crayons (as in ), but some editors modify these to crayons (as in  ), look at the first two revisions of Pyramid, where pharaohs was changed to. I personally prefer the former. Should we set a convention here and stick to it? (to be explicitely added to the 'Prefer singular nouns' paragraph in Naming conventions) --Gerald Squelart

A. KQ's opinion: What it seems to me happened is that a contributor didn't like the look of a word which was partly linked and so caused it to display otherwise, in much the same way as the   example above. That doesn't change the link itself, or the title of the page that it will link to or allow to be created, just how it displays. Personally I don't mind it if a word is only partly linked; I've done it with for instance European in some entries, and I think it's easily enough changed if it does bother someone. I'd be interested to hear other opinions on the subject.

 * I think that partially linked words are deeply unattractive! What's the use of an interface if it can't hide some of the functions from you, the way  pharaohs does? On the other hand, people who use partial links are giving neurotics like me something to do when we don't feel like writing a new entry.  --MichaelTinkler

 * The problem being that other kinds of neurotics like me will want to change things back the way we like it (and the way I wrote it first :-)! Let me just explain my point of view: I believe links shouldn't be hidden under a different name. So, if I click 'pharaohs', I'd expect to go to a page name 'Pharaohs', not 'Pharaoh'. I know, it's not much different, but hey. I didn't want to change the pyramid page back because I felt it may end up in a kind of war, where the page is modified every five minutes back and forth between both styles, it's just counter-productive! Michael, to satisfy your cravings, you may want to modify the link to tetrominoes in the Tetris page :)) But seriously, I'd prefer you refrain from doing it, until we conclude something here, pleeez! Other inputs welcome... --Gerald Squelart
 * Oh well, it seems nothing can stop Michael in his crusade (see World Wide Web), so I give up.

 * The partial links approach does not work with languages where the plural form of a noun is not obtained by appending a suffix to the singular (Italian: Faraone, "Pharaoh", pl Faraoni), and in general where a derived word does not usually contain the main word (Italian: Europa, "Europe", adj Europeo).

On a related note to plural names, there is some discussion for talk:Baptist of how to we properly name these various religious denominations such as Baptist, Presbyterian, and so on. In the plural form such as "Baptists" it is clearly a collective noun, but in the singular it is generally an adjective. Some have been entered as -isms, such as Catholicism and Protestantism, but Baptistism is not a common phrase and Baptism is definitely not the same thing :-) Any suggestions?  --Alan Millar

The page talks about preferring free links, but it doesn't encourage or discourage converting existing old-style links into free links whenever one runs into them. I see several possibilities:

1. Leave existing old style links as they are.

2. Rename existing old style links into pseudo-free-links: they look like free links, but point at the page named according to the old convention.

3. Rename existing old style links into free links, relocated pages named in old style to new pages named in new style.

4. Do that *and* find all pointers to the old-style name and change them.

5. Do that and that *and* disable old-style linking! - I like to convert them and all references to them. --Koyaanis Qatsi

Numbers
Years, model numbers, numbers themselves:

In the main page it says:
 * Only use numbers for years

 * In my opinion, numbers as page names should only be used for Year in Review entries. So call it Form 1040, not 1040, and Intel 386, not 386?. That way, if we ever want to add a page about what happened in the year 1040 or the year 386, we won't have a collision with the other uses of numbers. -- Simon J Kissane

 * 386 (and 80386) is used as a term to refer to the Intel 80386; people writing articles might create a link to 386. Perhaps they shouldn't, but there should at least be something on the 386 page for people that followed the link expecting to find something about CPUs.  I write this not knowing what is on the page 386, but having redirected 286 to Intel 80286 because I found the 286 link in an article (about the processor rather than the year).

It seems to me that some of these naming principles may make it more difficult for people writing pages to get the correct link first time. -- drj

 * The answer to that might be to mention "other things called "386" on the page for the year 386 — Tarquin

 * You can see a model for that at 1 and 2, using disambiguation block format. — Toby 10:55 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)

Numbers themselves
It is possible that numbers might be worthy of articles for other reasons. What about 1729, famously the first number expressible in two different ways as the sum of two cubes (from a conversation between Hardy and Ramanujan)? - drj

 * We've had articles called Number 2 and Number 0, about the actual numbers 2 and 0. This seemed a reasonabel convention. I've just noticed these are now at Two and Zero, which I think is better -- at least for small numbers. -- Tarquin 11:06 Oct 7, 2002 (UTC)

CPUs
I think processor architectures and names should be described on pages of the form
 * Manufacturer model-name/number

so Intel 80386, Motorola 68000, Zilog z80. I think creating redirects from shorter more common names is healthy and to be encouraged. I think most of the already written articles are already named like this.

Problem: architecture names that don't have a manufacturer, or not a snappy one. Example: PowerPC names an _architecture_ (ie not a particular chip) designed by a consortium of Apple, Motorola, and IBM. IBM PowerPC (IBM own's the trademark and these days Motorola license it) seems slightly dishonest - it gives IBM too much credit - whereas IBM--Motorola PowerPC seems very clumsy.

Common personal names

This issue was discussed in talk:List of saints, and I think it should also be borne in mind for articles on monarchs, Biblical figures, etc. I'd like to know how others think this should be addressed.

begin quote

And perhaps standardise their nomenclature before we get too many more?

 * Good idea, Malcolm. This is what I suggested to MichaelTinkler a couple of days ago:

 * Regarding names: I'm personally inclined to naming pages with the saint's name, and location or other description to distinguish between eg Augustine of Hippo and Augustine of Canterbury. Problem is that other Wikipedians may have already made a link to Saint XXX - that's how I found Saint Columba, for instance.  It shouldn't be a *huge* problem, though.

The current Wikipedia pages with Saint at the start probably should be changed to just their name (and location if necessary) - must watch out for the backlinks too.

end quote

Common personal names are of course going to cause confusion especially in the case of monarchs. (I'm only familiar with European history, and have no idea whether this is going to be a problem with historical figures from other cultures.) For example, why does Henry I refer to the English king while Henry I the Fowler requires a more specific title? Should the Henry I page refer to Henry I of England, Henry I the Fowler, etc?

Also: should we use Sir Donald Bradman or Donald Bradman? Redirect one to the other?

There was a bit of discussion on how to handle titular names over on my talk page a while back: user talk:Paul Drye. Essentially "Go with the name that is likeliest to be used in common parlance". "Henry the Fowler" and "Henry I" in these cases because, well, that's what people call them. Since then I'm starting to think that the way to handle this better might be to have the page "Henry I Fowler" (to pick a specific example), and then have "Henry the Fowler" redirect to it, but that concerns me a bit because of ambiguity. If two people have the same common name, redirects are not going to help.

I've also been putting in a bit on an explanatory note in articles where I though they were need. See Duke of Wellington and William of Orange as examples. -- Paul Drye

Most long phrases (e.g., Ich bin ein Berliner; the most remarkable formula in the world) shouldn't contain capitalized words.

'Ich bin ein Berliner' is really silly example - it contains capitalized word --Taw
 * Correctly so because German nouns are always capitalized. --Eclecticology

Discussions on Nomenclature

- Moved from article for discussion: === When all else fails ===

''These conventions don't resolve all naming questions -- sometimes there is more than one "correct" answer. Some words have more than one widely used spelling: Mohammad vs Muhammed, civilization vs civilisation, honour vs honor. Or maybe Ural Mountains vs Ural mountains: is it a proper name or not? In this case it makes no difference which option is chosen, but there are a few things to consider:''

''*Always list variant spellings at the beginning of the article, if you can think of them. This helps with searching.'' ''*Always create redirections for the other variants if they are small in number. This helps to avoid duplicate articles.'' ''*Never move an article from one variant to another, unless you are more or less rewriting it. This is pointless work and may be irritating to the person who created the article.''

What is important is what the majority of current English speakers will recognize. Therefore Mohammed should be the redirect and Muhammad should be the article (see naming conventions). The "Ural Mountains" example has already been discussed - if the second or subsequent words are not always capitalized, then the convention is to use lower case naming (see naming conventions).

I agree with the varient spellings part and the redirection of varients to the main article. However if a varient is used for the name of an article and not the correctly named article (per naming conventions) then the artilce should be moved and all the broken redirects fixed. For the reasons why please see my responses on Talk:Linda Lovelace and User talk:maveric149. --maveric149

 * I don't think it's practical to decide what the majority of English speakers recognise, but Muhammed and Mohammad are both very common. I agree that incorrectly named articles should be moved. --Anon

It is practical to decide what the majority of English speakers will recognize -- although not always easy. What is needed is some experience on how the term is commonly used along with making sure that you name articles in a disambiguous manor while trying to preserve easy linking, and also to use Google if you get stuck. Search for both varients and see which one comes up with the most hits (looking for hits that only have the exact term as part of the title of the page is best -- otherwise you might get more hits for Urals vs Ural mountains., for example -- Urals is more ambiguous than Ural mountains and therefore violates another rule) --maveric149

 * Commonly used variants should be acceptable even if not what the majority of web pages use, e.g., most web pages in English are probably written by people in the USA, so all British English variants are excluded automatically -- which is against some other Wikipedia policy I read somewhere else. --Anon.

The English/British spelling variation is a separate matter -- the agreed upon protocal (after much angst) is that the spelling that is first used wins and redirects take care of the alternate spellings. Therefore we have metre and picometer. The commonality of varients is not always clear cut and discussion and consensus then has to be used with Google playing as a type of "objective" intermediary. In some cases this doesn't work very well since Google does not have the abiltiy (to my knowledge) to exclude non-English webpages. A place where this breaks down would be searching for the most correct spelling of the Dutchman Anton van Leeuwenhoek by searching against the alternate spelling of "Antoni van Leeuwenhoek". The second spelling gets a 1000 more hits but almost all of them are in Dutch. So this using Google is only part of the formula when working these things out. --maveric149

- 27/5/02 The convention says PREFER singular nouns, but isn't there a place for the plurals - in articles talking about a plural subject (eg.lists) If you are looking for say British fantasy authors, you are not going to look for it as British fantasy author (singular) - it just doesn't make sense. Surely it's just as easy to make the redirect work the other way around in this case? Shouldn't simple logic play a part in how strictly the naming conventions are applied? If I see an article titled in the singular I expect it to BE singular (not about the plural), and vice versa ~ KJ

 * You do have a point but then one would have to write British fantasy author when trying to say that "X Smith was a British fantasy author. I agree that redirects are great, but their presence is not obvious and contributors will tend to either make edit links that don't link to the correct article or use torturous piping like in my example. The reason why the convention exists is to make linking easy and natural within an edit window of another article (this is the wiki way). However, I would suggest that as soon as a page titled British fantasy author gets fleshed out into a decently sized article then the best thing to do would be to move the list to list of British fantasy authors and have this list linked at the bottom of British fantasy author. Any article with the word "list" in the title is going to be inherently plural so pluralization in this case is called for and appropriate. Come to think of it, we might decide that it is more gramatically correct to have author of British fantasy. Then one could say that "X Smith is an author of British fantasy" -- which I tend to like better (Argh! I already moved most of these author pages).--maveric149

Is there a policy on acented characters in page names, for example André Breton? I suggest making that the main page, and creating Andre Breton as a redirecting page. -- user:Tarquin
 * We try to do things the other way around in wikiland -- those damn yanks don't know how to make the accents and international characters with their keyboards and will assume direct links are needed to link to a page (redirects ain't obvious and the original author of any particular article hardly ever provides them). What the name of the page itself is called is more important for making internal linking as much of a no-brainer as possible and for gaining the largest number of Google hits (going back to the "damn Yanks" problem -- most searches on search engine for someones name will not have the accent and since search engines like Google rank pages partly based on whether the searched for name is part of the page title, "Andre Brenton" will rank higher and get more hits than "André Breton" since most netcitizens will be searching for "Andre Breton" and not "André Breton" -- even if "Andre Breton" is a redirect to "André Breton" the ranking will be lower because the only content of the non-accented title will be #REDIRECT André Breton ). Of course, in the first line of the article and throughout use "André Breton". Please also see naming convention of use of English names.--maveric149

What's the convention for "juniors" (ie John F. Kennedy Jr.). ? --Robert Merkel
 * I don't think there is a set convention on that -- however John F. Kennedy Jr. looks fine to me. --mav

Isn't it common to use a comma, i.e. John F. Kennedy, Jr.? Or am I wrong here? Jheijmans 02:59 Jul 23, 2002 (PDT)

 * The standard University of Chicago Press Manual of Style gives the examples:
 * Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
 * Adlai Stevenson III

 * So, comma for Junior, but not for the "royal" numbers. Ortolan88 21:54 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Changing
So how, when and where were these decided? Can the discussion be reopened, or is all the discussion still going on on the Talk pages just filling of space and wasting of time?Andre Engels

These things are roughly worked out on the mailing list and specifics are decided on relevant talk pages. The city naming convention roughly had it's start on the mailing list with a general consensus that there should be consistency in naming within countries. As the specifics were being worked out the general convention on consistency was questioned by some. This particular convention may become disambiguation based in the same way the movie naming convention is now as a result. To a certain extent discussion technically can be reopened for any convention if/when a particular convention is no longer deemed useful but the longer a convention is in place the harder it is to change. We also shouldn't be changing conventions all the time because they then lose their usefullness and work previously done under an older convention will have to be fixed to follow the new. --mav

 * As I see, it the discussion on the list simply died out with no conclusive solution. However, when the naming conventions page was updated, I assumed there was a real decision made on the topic. In later talks, I found out that that was not the case.
 * I agree we should not keep challenging naming conventions when they are established, but we should establish them properly first. Since there does not appear to be a way to reason each other to the on or other solution, I propose a vote should be held to decide. When that has happened, I (and everybody else, hopefully) will obey the new convention, no matter the outcome.
 * Since there hasn't been a proper decision on the city naming conventions, and it is still hotly disputed (I know I'm not the only one against it), I propose a vote. We should try to notify everybody involved in any of these this discussions (and others interested) and have a vote. That is a nice democratic way to decide upon something which is never going to be settled in another way.
 * We should then close the subject, unless new and good reasons show up to decide for another solution. Jeronimo

we should refer to spacecraft from the USSR according to their Russian name-not according to the English name.

Roman numerals should be used when referring to spacecraft. Lir 07:09 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

Would there be any objections if we changed the "Languages, both natural and programming" convention from: Programming languages should be suffixed with "programming language", and natural languages with "language", to:

''Languages which share their names with some other thing should be suffixed with "programming languages" in the case of programming languages, and "language" in the case of natural languages. If the language's name is unique, there is no need for any suffix. For example, Python programming language and English language, but Visual Basic and Sanskrit.''

(As an aside: I'd also like to think that eventually English language could be changed to English (language), as mav says at Talk:Sanskrit, but I don't think the pipe trick he refers to on that page is widely enough known for this to be such a great idea just at the moment - it does mean an extra pair of parenthesis to type for those who don't know the trick, after all). --Camembert

 * Well, no objections, so I'm changing the convention. I'll move pages that need to be moved as I come across them. --Camembert 00:25 Nov 29, 2002 (UTC)

 * on my way to add the pipe trick to the FAQ ... -- Tarquin 10:23 Nov 29, 2002 (UTC)

More discussion on this convention change is at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages)

Is there a convention about Arabic names? E.g. is it "Al Saud", "al Saud", "Al-Saud", or "al-Saud"...? "Bin" or "bin"...? Does it depend on the country of origin? -- Oliver Pereira 16:55 Nov 27, 2002 (UTC)
 * The "al" in this context simply means "the" and is used with proper nouns in Arabic when English would never think of doing so. "bin" or more correctly "ibn" refers to a patronymic. "abu" is for a kind of surname. AFAIK "al" is always written with a small "a" even when it begins a sentence; it is always followed by a hyphen.  "Ibn" is always written with a small "i", but not when it begins a sentence; it is not followed by a hyphen.  "Abu" uses a capital and is not followed by a hyphen.  Eclecticology 01:48 Nov 29, 2002 (UTC)

What should lists of people be named? Famous boozers, List of boozers, List of noted boozers, or what? I favour List of boozers, myself -Martin
 * That view is consistent with the general trend on Wikipedia. Articles that seem to contradict this are often older articles that were never converted, or sometimes ones where the membership is so low that a list is not warranted.  Of course, sometimes there can be other exceptions. Eclecticology 19:05 Dec 23, 2002 (UTC)

The article has a typo: acryonm. Someone with permission, please fix it. -- Heron

 * Fixed. Thanx for seeing that. --mav

I redirected topic creation here, since it was just duplicated content. Could someone remove the link there? Martin

 * done. --mav 20:07 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

Discussion moved to this page:

I have a problem with the naming of some of my articles. In the "Wikipedia naming convention" I could not find the answer. My problem is: In South Tyrol, Italy, we have two official languages. German and Italian. So, every city, every place, every mountain has two names. Two official names. What should the title of the article then be? e.g.: Bolzano / Bozen (but I have seen, the / is a problem in titles). BTW, the problem of which one comes first, italian or german, I am already afraid of that discussion... Thanks for your help, Fantasy 21:34 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)

 * Hm. We usually go by most common usage by English speakers but that is a bit difficult for small towns in countries where English is not the first language. But searching all English language webpages on Google indicates that significantly more English speakers use Bolzano instead of Bozen. I'm not sure if this will be the case for all cities in that part of Italy... I know this is probably a political issue but for cities that do not have English name it makes the most sense to me to use the Italian names as a general rule since these are Italian cities (but there probably are cases were the German name is more commonly used by English speakers). I hope this helps. --mav

Only recently a University in Bozen was founded: http://www.unibz.it/ You can see there on the top for the language selection:

- Freie Universität Bozen

- Libera Universita di Bolzano

- Free University of Bozen - Bolzano

As you can see, the "english" name is "Bozen-Bolzano" Can I use that as a title, or is that not liked in Wikipedia? Thanks, Fantasy

 * Bozen - Bolzano looks perfectly acceptable to me. But this discussion should be moved to a place where more people interested in the outcome can see it. You can copy this thread to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions. --mav

 * Great, thanks for your help, Fantasy

 * I do not agree with Bozen-Bolzano. This double name is just used, because the university did not want to prefer one name. But nobody would use it in this form. Encyclopaedia Britannica uses the Italian names for places in South Tyrol, where no english name exists. It appears natural to me to do it the same way. Or do you think, that a naming dispute about the article titles might arise (unfortunately quite common on Wikipedia)? In that case Bozen-Bolzano might be a compromise, but I still don't like it. -- Cordyph 22:40 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)

 * ...you are not alone. I do not like it either, but there are two official names. Just for your information: In ~1920 Ettore Tolomei, an italian, started to translate the german names in italian names. Most of the names have been german. Even Families had to give up their german family name and translate it to italian. Now, after many years of fights south tyrol came to a status, where both names, the original ones and the new italian one are "at the same level", so who decides which one is the right one? Encyclopedia Britannica? See also http://zis.uibk.ac.at/stirol_doku/dokumente/19610214.html for information about the italianisation of South Tyrol. Sorry for the my way of writing, the argument is a little bit difficult and I am no english native speaker... Fantasy

Please add a language link sv:Wikipedia:Namngivning. Thanks! // Liftarn

There's a discussion of renaming the U.S. presidential election, 2000 page as well as all of the other U.S. presidential election pages going on in Talk:U.S. presidential election, 2000. The options being discussed are:
 * 1) U.S. presidential election, 2000 (status quo)
 * 2) U.S. presidential election of 2000
 * 3) US presidential election of 2000
 * 4) US Presidential Election of 2000

I'm leaning toward U.S. presidential election of 2000, but as long as we're talking about doing a bunch of work for 45(?) election articles, I'd like to make sure we do it just once. Any thoughts from this crowd? Should we be using "United States" instead of U.S.? -- RobLa 06:55 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be helpful (read: "a bloody nuisance") to separate some issues here, since some of them are quite general and would apply to a lot of articles:-
 * 1) What, in general, are the conventions for using dots in abbreviations? Are they (a) useful for indicating abbreviations, or (b) redundant? Or does it depend on the context?
 * 2) More specifically, how should the United States of America be referred to in titles? "United States"? "U.S."? "US"?
 * 3) When do titles need to be capitalised? Is George W. Bush the President or the president?
 * 4) What about derived adjectives - was his election Presidential or presidential?
 * 5) How do we disambiguate regular events by year? With a comma, a colon, parentheses, or with "flowing prose"? Does this also depend on context?

Hmm, maybe I've over-complicated everything here, but these issues are bound to come up again and again, so the earlier we come up with some definite guidelines the better, I think... -- Oliver P. 04:16 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

 * for ", 2000" vs "of 2000", see wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (years in titles)

Naming convention fans may be interested to know that I've proposed a convention at the bottom of Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (pieces of music) which will be springing into action in a few days if there are no objections. You may, or may not, like to have a look at it. --Camembert

I'm going to move discussion of the correct title of the (US/U.S.) war in/on/against Iraq to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Iraq war). Martin

-- Anybody interested see Talk:Gangsta rap, which I would like to move to gangsta hip hop for reasons described there. Tuf-Kat

I want to establish a convention for names of military units, in particular those identified by generic names and numbers, such as 1st Infantry Division. These designations are highly ambiguous, since many countries of the world use them. Options are basically Bulgarian 1st Infantry Division, 1st Infantry Division (Bulgaria), or 1st Infantry Division, Bulgaria. The first "reads" better, but the adjectives are awkward for some countries, the second is more of a wikipedia standard, but will almost always need pipe-trickery, and the third will read OK sometimes, but is idiosyncratic and not often seen. Preferences? Stan 05:49 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

 * The first one seems better on first sight, but I'd like to see wider discussion, with examples, before I make up my mind completely. Tannin

Should the ampersand (&) be on the list of discouraged characters? It's listed there in the "for technical reasons" section, but I know I've seen it in article titles, sometimes even with the same title with "and" spelled out redirected to one with the ampersand in it, e.g. Jesus and Mary Chain. Is this in anticipation of using it for something else, or should it be removed from the list there? -- John Owens 22:23 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * We went to some trouble to get the ampersand to work (see patch to apache.) So we can have AT&T and whatnot. Be careful with it, though; if you put it next to something that looks like a named character entity it might not do what you expect. --Brion 23:45 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"Saint" in article titles
Moved from Village pump on Thursday, July 10th, 02003.

Is there any kind of rule about whether "Saint" is abbreviated in article titles? —Paul A 05:44 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * "Saint" is not abbreviated is article titles about individual saints (Saint George, Saint Nicholas), however it may be abbreviated in names of building, etc. when this is common practice (St. David's Cathedral, but Cathedral of Saint Stephan). Furthermore, the title "Saint" is avoided in article titles when possible (John the Baptist, Martin of Tours) - Efghij

In many cases however it is impossible to use a saint's name without using saint because they are identified exclusively with it and unrecognisable without it. (BTW there are a few people who insist on changing the names of buildings from St. to Saint, even though that should not be done. Can we put a wikicurse on these people? :-) FearÉIREANN 17:57 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

title: Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 1


text:
User:Tara El Masry

Well, guess I should say a bit about myself. I have a BA in Anthropology and Religious Studies from the University of Miami, and am currently engaged in graduate studies. I was born in America to mixed race (European America, African American, and Native American) parents. My husband is Palestinian.

title: User:Tara El Masry


text:
SSTV

SSTV may refer to:

 * SS-TV (SS-Totenkopfverbände), the SS department responsible for administering the death camps
 * Sistema Sandinista de Televisión, Nicaragua
 * South Sudan Television
 * Sur Sagar TV, Canada
 * Slow-scan television, a picture transmission method

title: SSTV


text:
Cad Goddeu

Cad Goddeu (Kat Godeu, The Battle of the Trees) is a medieval Welsh poem preserved in the 14th-century manuscript known as the Book of Taliesin. The poem refers to a traditional story in which the legendary enchanter Gwydion animates the trees of the forest to fight as his army. The poem is especially notable for its striking and enigmatic symbolism and the wide variety of interpretations this has occasioned.

Poem
Some 248 short lines long (usually five syllables and a rest), and falling into several sections, the poem begins with an extended claim of first-hand knowledge of all things, in a fashion found later in the poem and also in several others attributed to Taliesin;

culminating in a claim to have been at "Caer Vevenir" when the Lord of Britain did battle. There follows an account of a great monstrous beast, of the fear of the Britons and how, by Gwydion's skill and the grace of God, the trees marched to battle: then follows a list of plants, each with some outstanding attribute, now apt, now obscure;

The poem then breaks into a first-person account of the birth of the flower-maiden Blodeuwedd, and then the history of another one, a great warrior, once a herdsman, now a learned traveller, perhaps Arthur or Taliesin himself. After repeating an earlier reference to the Flood, the Crucifixion and the day of judgment, the poem closes with an obscure reference to metalwork.

Interpretations
There are contemporary passing allusions to the Battle of Trees elsewhere in the medieval Welsh collections: The Welsh Triads record it as a "frivolous" battle, while in another poem of the Book of Taliesin the poet claims to have been present at the battle.

According to a summary of a similar story preserved in Peniarth MS 98B (which dates from the late sixteenth century) the poem describes a battle between Gwydion and Arawn, the Lord of Annwn. The fight broke out after the divine plowman Amaethon stole a dog, a lapwing, and a roebuck from Arawn. Gwydion ultimately triumphed by guessing the name of one of Arawn's men, Bran (possibly Bran the Blessed).

In the Mabinogi story of the childhood of Lleu Llaw Gyffes, Gwydion makes a forest appear to be an invading force.

The Cad Goddeu, which is difficult to translate because of its laconic allusiveness and grammatical ambiguity, was the subject of several nineteenth-century speculative commentaries and English renderings. Thomas Stephens held the poem to concern "a Helio-Arkite superstition, the metempsychosis of a Chief Druid, and a symbolical account of the Deluge". Gerald Massey's monumental work on African origins suggested that the poem reflected Egyptian religion.

David William Nash believed it was a poor-quality twelfth-century romance overlaying a romance or story of the Arthurian era and put together with other poetic fragments. W. F. Skene rejected the antiquity of the prose account and thought the poem reflected the history of the north country during the Irish incursions. Watson followed Skene and Ifor Williams posed the question 'What about the Battle of Celyddon Wood?'

Robert Graves took up a speculation that had been considered and rejected by Nash; that the trees that fought in the battle correspond to the Ogham alphabet, in which each character is associated with a particular tree. Each tree had a meaning and significance of its own, and Gwydion guessed Bran's name by the alder branch Bran carried, the alder being one of Bran's prime symbols. Graves argued that the original poet had concealed druidic secrets about an older matriarchal Celtic religion for fear of censure from Christian authorities. He suggested that Arawn and Bran were names for the same underworld god and that the battle was probably not physical but rather a struggle of wits and scholarship: Gwydion's forces could only be defeated if the name of his companion, Lady Achren ("Trees"), was guessed and Arawn's host only if Bran's name was guessed.

Graves, following Nash, accepted that the poem is a composite of several different sections, among which he named a Hanes Taliesin (History of Taliesin) and a Hanes Blodeuwedd (History of Blodeuwedd).

Marged Haycock and Mary Ann Constantine reject the idea that Cad Goddeu encodes ancient pagan religions as Graves believed but rather see it as a burlesque, a grand parody of bardic language. Francesco Bennozo argues that the poem represents ancient fears of the forest and its magical powers. Trudy Carmany Last suggests that Cad Goddeu is a Celtic variant of Virgil’s Aeneid.

Other uses
A track titled "Cad Goddeau" appears on the 1984 album Eostre by the British band Zoviet France.

Singer-songwriter Tori Amos was inspired by the story of Cad Goddeu for her song "Battle of Trees", which appears on Night of Hunters, a narrative concept album, presented as a 21st-century song cycle. This song, a variation on Erik Satie's Gnossienne No. 1, uses references to Cad Goddeu to reflect on the power of language as a battle-ready weapon.

Soviet and later Russian rock group Aquarium recorded a song "Kad Goddo" on their album Deti Dekabrya, 1986, quoting some of the lines directly from the poem.

Tim Powers has the protagonist of his book The Drawing of the Dark, Brian Duffy, utter a few verses of the Cad Goddeu to evoke ancient beings to fight with him.

"Duel of the Fates" is a musical theme recurring in the Star Wars prequel trilogy and the expanded universe. It was composed by John Williams and recorded for the film soundtrack by the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Voices. This symphonic piece is played with both a full orchestra and a choir. The lyrics are based on a fragment of Cad Goddeu, and sung in Sanskrit.

title: Cad Goddeu


text:
PSK

PSK may refer to:

Organisations

 * Revolutionary Party of Kurdistan (PŞK), a Kurdish Separatist guerrilla group in Turkey
 * Kurdistan Socialist Party (PSK), a Kurdish party in Turkey
 * Phi Sigma Kappa, a fraternity
 * Österreichische Postsparkasse (P.S.K.), a postal savings bank in Austria
 * Post Südstadt Karlsruhe, a German sports club

Science and technology

 * Phase-shift keying, a digital modulation technique
 * Pre-shared key, a method to set encryption keys
 * Polysaccharide-K, a protein-bound polysaccharide

Other uses

 * "P.S.K. What Does It Mean?", a song by Schoolly D
 * Pekerja Seks Komersial, Indonesian word for a prostitute

title: PSK


text:
Guy Kawasaki

Guy Takeo Kawasaki (born August 30, 1954) is an American marketing specialist, author, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984. He popularized the word evangelist in marketing the Macintosh as an "Apple evangelist" and the concepts of evangelism marketing and technology evangelism/platform evangelism in general.

From March 2015 until December 2016, Kawasaki sat on the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees, the non-profit operating entity of Wikipedia.

Kawasaki has also written fifteen books, including The Macintosh Way (1990), The Art of the Start (2004), and Wise Guy: Lessons from a Life (2019).

Early life
Guy Kawasaki was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Duke Takeshi Kawasaki (d. 2015) and Aiko Kawasaki. His family lived in an area outside Honolulu called Kalihi Valley. His father, Duke, once served as a fireman, real estate broker, state senator, and government official while his mother was a housewife. He attended ʻIolani School and graduated in 1972.

Kawasaki graduated from Stanford University in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology. He then attended law school at UC Davis, but quit after about a week of classes when he realized that he disliked law school. In 1977, he enrolled in the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he earned an MBA degree. While there, Kawasaki also worked at a jewelry company, Nova Stylings. Kawasaki observed, "The jewelry business is a very, very tough business, tougher than the computer business... I learned a very valuable lesson: how to sell."

Career
In 1983, Kawasaki got a job at Apple through his Stanford roommate, Mike Boich. He was Apple's chief evangelist for four years. In a 2006 podcast interview on the online site Venture Voice, Kawasaki said, "What got me to leave is basically I started listening to my own hype, and I wanted to start a software company and really make big bucks." In 1987 he was hired to lead ACIUS, the U.S. subsidiary of France-based ACI, which published an Apple database software system called 4th Dimension.

Kawasaki left ACIUS in 1989 to further his writing and speaking career. In the early 1990s he wrote columns that were featured in Forbes and MacUser magazines. He also founded another company, Fog City Software, which created Emailer, an email client that sold to Claris. A collection of namesake software utilities called Guy's Utilities for Macintosh (GUM), was published by After Hours Software in the early 1990s. An edition of GUM for PowerBook systems was acquired by Gordon Eubanks and was subsequently remarketed by Symantec as The Norton Essentials for PowerBook.

He returned to Apple as an Apple Fellow in 1995. In 1998, he was a co-founder of Garage Technology Ventures, a venture capital firm that has made investments in Pandora Radio, Tripwire, The Motley Fool and D.light Design. In 2007, he founded Truemors, a free-flow rumor mill, that sold to NowPublic. He is also a founder at Alltop, an online magazine rack.

In March 2013, Kawasaki joined Google as an advisor to Motorola. His role was to create a Google+ mobile device community.

In April 2014, Kawasaki became the chief evangelist of Canva. It is a free graphic design website for non-designers as well as professionals and was founded in January 2013.

On March 24, 2015, Kawasaki joined Wikimedia Foundation's board of trustees. He stepped down at the end of December 2016.

On April 25, 2017, WikiTribune mentioned him as an adviser.

On February 26, 2019, Penguin Group released Wise Guy, described as Kawasaki's most personal book to date. While the book is written as what could be considered a memoir, it contains a series of vignettes that include various personal experiences that Kawasaki says have enlightened and inspired him.

December 2019 to Current, Kawasaki created a podcast called Remarkable People. There are now over 90 episodes available including interviews with Jane Goodall, Stephen Wolfram, Andrew Yang and Sal Khan. Kawasaki has stated that he believed the podcast was his best and most under appreciated work.

Personal life
Kawasaki and his wife have four children: Nicodemus ("Nic"), Noah, Nohemi, and Nate. Nohemi and Nate are biological siblings whom the couple adopted from Guatemala.

title: Guy Kawasaki


text:
Dís

In Norse mythology, a dís (Old Norse:, "lady", plural dísir ) is a female deity, ghost, or spirit associated with Fate who can be either benevolent or antagonistic toward mortals. Dísir may act as protective spirits of Norse clans. It is possible that their original function was that of fertility goddesses who were the object of both private and official worship called dísablót, and their veneration may derive from the worship of the spirits of the dead. The dísir, like the valkyries, norns, and vættir, are always referred collectively in surviving references. The North Germanic dísir and West Germanic Idisi are believed by some scholars to be related due to linguistic and mythological similarities, but the direct evidence of Anglo-Saxon and Continental German mythology is limited. The dísir play roles in Norse texts that resemble those of fylgjur, valkyries, and norns, so that some have suggested that dísir is a broad term including the other beings.

Etymology and meaning
Researchers suggest that the basic meaning of the word dís is "goddess".

It usually is said to be derived from the Indo-European root *dhēi-, "to suck, suckle" and a form dhīśana.

Scholars have associated the Dísir with the West Germanic Idisi, seeing the initial i- as having been lost early in Old or Proto-Norse. Jacob Grimm points out that dís Skjöldunga in the Eddic Helgakviða Hundingsbana II (v. 52) is exactly parallel to ides Scildinga "Scylding queen" in Beowulf (l. 1168). He also suggests that Iðunn may be a reflex of the original form of the word. However, except for the First Merseburg Charm, in which they work battle-magic, idis only occurs with the meaning "lady", sometimes "maiden." The words are not presumed to be directly related by some scholars, although the resemblance evidently led to influence on Old Norse poetic use.

Other scholars group all female deities and spirits associated with battle under the class of idis, dis, valkyrie, and other names, such as sigewif (victory-women, associated by the Anglo-Saxons with a swarm of bees), and find the commonalities both linguistically and in surviving myths and magic charms sufficient cause to group together all variations on this theme from various Germanic cultures.

Stories from these and other cultures survive from earlier dates than the Eddas and it is difficult to conclusively construct a clear pre-Christian mythology without conjecture. However, the Germanic languages appear to have had a northward, rather than southward, progression from the initial contact with the speakers of Indo-European languages near Denmark or Jutland. H. Davidson notes a similar northward progression of mythology where elements of Proto-Germanic concepts have metamorphosed or been combined by the time of the initial recording of the Icelandic sagas.

According to Rudolf Simek, Old Norse dís appears commonly as simply a term for 'woman', just as Old High German itis, Old Saxon idis, and Anglo-Saxon ides. It also may have been used to denote a type of goddess. According to Simek, "several of the Eddic sources might lead us to conclude that the disir were valkyrie-like guardians of the dead, and, indeed, in Guðrúnarkviða I 19 the valkyries are even called Herjans disir 'Odin's disir'. The disir are explicitly called dead women in Atlamál 28. A secondary belief that the disir were the souls of dead women (see fylgjur) also underlies the landdísir of Icelandic folklore."

Simek says that "as the function of the matrons was also extremely varied – fertility goddess, personal guardians, but also warrior-goddesses – the belief in the dísir, like the belief in the valkyries, norns, and matrons, may be considered to be different manifestations of a belief in a number of female (half-?) goddesses."

Dísablót
There is considerable evidence that the dísir were worshipped in Scandinavia in pagan times.

Firstly, a sacrificial festival (blót) honouring them, the dísablót, is mentioned in one version of Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks konungs and in Víga-Glúms saga, Egils saga, and the Heimskringla. According to Víga-Glúms saga it was held at Winter Nights (at the onset of winter).

In Hervarar saga, the dísablót is also held in autumn, and is performed by a woman, the daughter of King Álfr of Álfheim, who "reddens the hörgr with sacrifices and is subsequently rescued by the god Thor after she has been abducted. John Lindow suggests that, on its face the text depicts a mythological model for human behavior. In western Scandinavia, dísablót appears to have been a private observance. Even the large gathering in Víga-Glúms saga was for family and friends.

In contrast, according to the Saga of St. Olaf in Heimskringla, at Gamla Uppsala the dísablót was celebrated during the month of Gói, i.e. in late February or early March, and accompanied by a popular assembly known as the Thing of all Swedes or Dísaþing and a yearly fair. When Christianity arrived, the assembly and market were moved to a Christian feast at the beginning of February:

"At the time when heathendom still prevailed in Sweden, it was an old custom there that the main sacrifices were held in Uppsala in the month of Gói... Sacrifices were to be made at that time for peace and victory for the king, and people from all over Sweden were to resort there. At that place and time also was to be the assembly of all Swedes, and there was also a market and a fair which lasted a week. Now when Christianity was introduced, the general assembly and the market were still held there. But at present, when Christianity is general in Sweden and the kings have ceased residing at Uppsala, the market has been shifted to meet at Candlemas... but now it lasts only three days. The general assembly of the Swedes is there."

The name Dísaþing (now Disting) remained in use, however, and the Fair is still held every year in Uppsala on the first Tuesday in February. It may be one of the oldest in Sweden.

The stated purpose of the dísablót at Uppsala is to sacrifice for peace and victory. Norwegian places called Disin, from Old Norse Dísavin, "meadow of the dísir", and the possible relationship of the word to the Indian dhīsanas have suggested to some scholars that the dísir were fertility deities.

There are two mentions of a hall or temple of a dís. Hollander translates dísarsálr as "the hall of the goddess". In the Ynglinga saga part of Heimskringla, Aðils, the king of Sweden, dies when he rides one of his horses around the dísarsálr at the time of Dísablót and he is thrown and brains himself on a rock, perhaps suggesting a ritual killing. It also appears in Hervarar saga where Helga becomes so infuriated over the death of her father at the hands of Heiðrekr, her husband, that she hangs herself in the shrine.

Although Snorri Sturluson does not mention the dísir in the Prose Edda, he does list Vanadís—'dís of the Vanir'— as a name for Freyja, and öndurdís—'snow-shoe dís'—as a name for Skaði. He notes that in both cases the compound using dís immediately follows one using goð, 'deity': Vanagoð, öndurgoð. Lotte Motz suggested that dís was the original Old Norse word for 'goddess' and that it had been replaced later by ásynja, which is simply the feminine of áss.

Relationship to other female figures
In many texts, the dísir are equated to or seem to play the same role as other female figures.

In Þiðranda þáttr ok Þórhalls, the youth Þiðrandi is killed by dísir dressed in black, riding black horses, while a troop of dísir dressed in white and riding white horses are unable to save him. The two groups represent the struggle between heathenry and Christianity. The benevolent dísir here play the role of tutelary spirits associated with a family, and Thorhall the Prophet explains them as fylgjur. The dísir are also referred to as if they are, or include, protective fylgjur in an exchange of verses in Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka. Útsteinn quarrels with Úlfr at the court of King Eysteinn of Denmark, saying he believes "our dísir" have come with him, armed, to Denmark. Úlfr replies that he thinks all the dísir of Útsteinn and his men are dead and their luck run out.

In Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, when the hero Helgi Hundingsbane first meets the valkyrie Sigrún, the poet calls her a "dís of the south". Henry Adams Bellows rendered this simply "the southern maid".

The dísir are also equated with or play the role of norns. They give an impression of great age, but by the time of the oldest surviving texts, their significance had become blurred and the word had lost almost all distinct meaning.

Accordingly, some scholars have argued that dísir may be the original term for the valkyries (lit. "choosers of the slain"), which in turn would be a kenning for dís. Unlike the mentions of the valkyrja and norn, the term dís never appears in the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson.

As stated above, dís has been regarded as cognate with Old High German itis, Old Saxon idis and the Anglo-Saxon ides, all meaning "lady",; and idisi appears as the name of the valkyries in the only surviving pagan source from Germany, the Merseburg Incantations (see below). Dís also had the meaning "lady" in Old Norse poetry, as in the case of Freyja, whose name means "lady" (frawjō) and who is called Vanadís ("lady of the vanir").

Adding to the ambiguous meaning of dís is the fact that just as supernatural women were called dísir in the sense "ladies", mortal women were frequently called by names for supernatural women, as noted by Snorri Sturluson in Skáldskaparmál:

Woman is also metaphorically called by the names of the Ásynjur or the Valkyrs or Norns or women of supernatural kind.

The name dís appears in several place names in Norway and Sweden. Moreover, it was a common element in the names of girls, as evidenced on runestones, and it still is in Iceland.

The word appears as a first element in Old High German female given names such as Itispuruc and Itislant. More frequent are Old Norse given names such as Thórdís, Hjördís, Ásdís, Vigdís, Halldís, Freydís.

Old Norse sources

In a couple of Eddic and skaldic poems, and in various kennings the generic dísir appears instead of the more specific labels norns, fylgjas, and valkyries.

The eddic poem Hamðismál deals with how Hamðir and Sörli go to the Gothic king Ermanaric to exact vengeance for the cruel death of their half-sister Svanhild. On the way, they kill their reluctant brother Erpr. Later, knowing that he is about to die at the hands of the Goths, Sörli talks of the cruelty of the dísir who incited him to kill Erpr, because he would have cut off the head of Ermanaric and made their expedition successful. In this poem, dísir appears as a synonym of norns and the translator Henry Adams Bellows simply translates dísir as norns:

In Grímnismál, the wise Grímnir (Odin) predicts king Geirröðr's death, which he attributes to the wrath of the dísir. Again, dísir is used as a synonym for the norns:

In Reginsmál, the unmarried Lyngheiðr is called dís ulfhuguð (dís/lady with the soul of a wolf) as an insult. Later in the same poem, there is a stanza, where the dísir appear as female spirits accompanying a warrior in order to see him dead in battle, a role where they are synonymous with valkyries:

An additional instance where dís is synonymous with valkyrie is the skaldic poem Krákumál – composed by Ragnarr Loðbrók while awaiting his death in a snake pit. It features the line: Heim bjóða mér dísir (the dísir invite me home), as one of several poetic circumscriptions for what awaits him.

One source seems to describe the Dísir as the ghosts or spirits of dead women. In Atlamál, believed to have been written in Greenland in the twelfth century, the character Glaumvör warns her husband Gunnar that she had a dream about the Dísir. Some of the surrounding text has been lost and it is not known what Gunnar may have said prior to this, and there is disagreement on which stanza number this should be given. A possible translation of the material is given as follows by John Lindow in his 2001 book Norse Mythology:

"I thought dead women came hither into the hall, not poorly decked out. They wished to choose you, would've invited you quickly to their benches; I declare of no value these dísir to you."

General and cited references

 * Simek, Rudolf (2007) translated by Angela Hall. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. D.S. Brewer ISBN 0-85991-513-1

title: Dís


text:
Cypripedium

Cypripedium is a genus of 58 species and nothospecies of hardy orchids; it is one of five genera that together compose the subfamily of lady's slipper orchids (Cypripedioideae). They are widespread across much of the Northern Hemisphere, including most of Europe and Africa (Algeria ) (one species), Russia, China, Central Asia, Canada the United States, Mexico, and Central America. They are most commonly known as slipper orchids, lady's slipper orchids, or ladyslippers; other common names include moccasin flower, camel's foot, squirrel foot, steeple cap, Venus' shoes, and whippoorwill shoe. An abbreviation used in trade journals is "Cyp." The genus name is derived from Ancient Greek Κύπρις, an early reference in Greek myth to Aphrodite, and πέδιλον , meaning "sandal".

Most of Cypripedium grow in temperate and subtropical climates, but some species grow in the tundra in Alaska and Siberia, which is an unusually cold habitat for orchids. Other species occur well into tropical areas such as Honduras and Myanmar.

Some of the northern species can withstand extreme cold, growing under the snow and blooming when the snow melts. But, in the wild, some have become rare and close to extinction, due to an ever shrinking natural habitat and over-collection, people prizing the flowers for their beauty. Several species are legally protected in some regions. In the late 20th century, only a single known plant of Cypripedium calceolus survived in Britain.

Characteristics
The Cypripedium are terrestrial and, as with most terrestrial orchids, the rhizome is short and robust, growing in the uppermost soil layer. The rhizome grows annually with a growth bud at one end and dies off at the other end. The stem grows from the bud at the tip of the rhizome. Most slipper orchids have an elongate erect stem, with leaves growing along its length. But the mocassin flower or pink lady's slipper (Cypripedium acaule) has a short underground stem with leaves springing from the soil. The often hairy leaves can vary from ovate to elliptic or lanceolate, folded (plicate) along their length. The stems lack pseudobulbs.

The inflorescence is racemose. It can carry one to twelve flowers, as in Cypripedium californicum. But most species have one to three flowers. There are three sepals, with, in most species, the two lateral ones more or less fused. The flower has three acute petals with the third a striking slipper-shaped lip, which is lowermost. The sepals and the petals are usually similarly colored, with the lip in a different color. But variations on this theme occur. The aspect of the lip of different species can vary a great deal. As with all orchids, it is specially constructed to attract pollinators, which it traps temporarily. The flowers show a column with a unique shield-like staminode. The ovary is 3-locular (with three chambers).

Taxonomy
Comparison between a DNA-analysis and the morphological characteristics in this genus has shown that there is a high degree of divergence between the two, probably due to long periods of isolation or extinction of intermediate forms. The Eurasian species with yellow or red flowers form a distinct group from the North American species with yellow flowers. The Mexican Pelican Orchid (Cypripedium irapeanum) and the California lady's slipper (Cypripedium californicum) are probably the first diverging line. They share several similarities with their sister group Selenipedium.

Species and natural hybrids
There are 58 currently recognized species and nothospecies (naturally occurring hybrids) recognized in this genus, as of May 2014:

Uses
The genus has a long history of use, dating back 2,500 years to the Far East, where they were used medicinally.

Conservation
Several orchid species thought to be extinct in the United Kingdom including one native species in this genus have been found in habitat and are currently the subject of aggressive conservation efforts to protect and restore these showy plants to their native ranges.

Awards
The following have received the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit:-
 * Cypripedium formosanum
 * Cypripedium Hank Small gx
 * Cypripedium Michael gx
 * Cypripedium reginae
 * Cypripedium Sabine gx

title: Cypripedium