[HaydnBearstheClock]

In Germany, we spell his name with an umlaut: Händel, and this is the correct way of spelling it. But Handel is ok if you're in the US or in Britain, that's not considered incorrect in English as far as I know. I guess Haendel could also be used, but 'ae' is just an imitation of 'ä', so it's better to just use Händel instead.

 

[apricissimus]

In Germany, we spell his name with an umlaut: Händel, and this is the correct way of spelling it. But Handel is ok if you're in the US or in Britain, that's not considered incorrect in English as far as I know. I guess Haendel could also be used, but 'ae' is just an imitation of 'ä', so it's better to just use Händel instead.

Why can't there be two (or more) correct spellings? Many people throughout history have spelled their names differently in different languages.

Also, would you say that someone writing a post in English (regardless of where you're from) should write "Handel" and not "Händel"?

 

[Guest]

I suspect there are some in the US that spell it Handel or Haendel because we don't have a convenient button on our keyboards to type "ä." Somebody told me one time the shortcut for typing with German characters - the umlauts, as well as the ess-tset - but I have forgotten. I was at one point fluent in German, and still correspond with friends in Germany and Switzerland, but I lapsed into ae, oe, ue, and ss instead of the German characters, just because it was simpler and quicker.

 

[Elgar's Ghost]

My suggestion is to adopt a quasi-Hebrew methodology and only write the consonants - thus we come to Hndl.

That reads a bit like Czech to me.

 

[Eschbeg]

And we haven't even gotten into what to do with his first and middle names. Georg Friedrich... George Frederick... George Frideric...

 

[deggial]

^ the whole thing is a mess!

 

[GiulioCesare]

Interesting.

I am not German, but I've been living in Germany for years now.

I actually know a guy called Händel. He's a friend of a friend, and I've met him several times at parties etc. When I found out what his last name was, I was ecstatic (and he was perplexed...).

So I hope the OP understands when I write Händel. Händel himself anglicized his last name, understandably, so it's obviously ok if people write Handel.

Also, Handel is German for "trade" or "commerce", and it would be pronounced quite differently (/'handl/ instead of /hɛndl/ in a phonetical transcription using the International Phonetic Alphabet), which makes it all the more weird for German speakers to use the version without umlaut.

There's another point I believe is relevant to this discussion, and that I've never seen raised. These days, the English pronunciation of Handel and the German pronunciation of Händel are different (/'hændl/ vs /'hɛndl/) but, and here's the interesting bit, they were identical in Händel's time. Back then, the English would have pronounced Handel the way the New Zealanders would pronounce it these days: that is, the exact same way the Germans pronounce (and pronounced) Händel (/'hɛndl/).

British English underwent a vowel shift in the mid-twentieth century that saw the pronunciation of those a's (as in "cab", "back", "bat") move from /ɛ/ to /æ/. The shift is so recent that it can be observed in the same person: Queen Elizabeth II can be heard using the old pronuncation in early speeches, but she uses the modern one now for the same words.

University paper about this: http://phonetik.uni-muenchen.de/~jmh/research/papers/harrington00.jipa.pdf
Telegraph article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...ueens_diamond_jubilee/9280753/The-Queens-English-changes-through-the-years.html

Incidentally, this phenomenon can also be heard in the accent of Stewie, the baby of the TV show Family Guy. The show creator and dub actor, Seth McFarlane, once said he took Stewie's overly affected accent from Rex Harrison, the British actor who desperately tried to teach Audrey Hepburn how to speak proper high-class English in the film My Fair Lady.

You will forgive me for this rant, but I'm a Händel hooligan and a linguist, and well...

 

[Taggart]

The shift is so recent that it can be observed in the same person: Queen Elizabeth II can be heard using the old pronuncation in early speeches, but she uses the modern one now for the same words.

University paper about this: http://phonetik.uni-muenchen.de/~jmh/research/papers/harrington00.jipa.pdf
Guardian article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...ueens_diamond_jubilee/9280753/The-Queens-English-changes-through-the-years.html

You will forgive me for this rant, but I'm a Händel hooligan and a linguist, and well...

Of course I forgive you. Language is important. The blog points out that in Italy, Handel spelt his name as Hendel to match the German pronunciation.

One difficulty though, you've labelled it Guardian article but it's actually from the Telegraph. This may produce apoplexy in left wing readers being directed to a true blue newspaper.

 

[GiulioCesare]

Of course I forgive you. Language is important. The blog points out that in Italy, Handel spelt his name as Hendel to match the German pronunciation.

One difficulty though, you've labelled it Guardian article but it's actually from the Telegraph. This may produce apoplexy in left wing readers being directed to a true blue newspaper.

Oops, thanks for pointing that out to me. Corrected.

And yes, Hendel would indeed be the best way to get the Italians to pronounce "Händel" as in the original German, as a tonic e is pronounced /ɛ/ in most Italian regions (and they'd probably just butcher Händel anyway). Smart chap, this Georg.

 

[Elgar's Ghost]

I wonder if Handel ever used the names 'Georgio Federico' at any time i.e on the manuscripts of his early Italian commissions? I ask this because Mozart Italianised his first two names to 'Wolfgango Amadeo'* occasionally (or maybe his father did so on his behalf), and Beethoven sometimes used 'Luigi' in some correspondence.

* the spelling surprised me as the letter W is rarely, if at all, seen in Italian.

 

[HaydnBearstheClock]

Why can't there be two (or more) correct spellings? Many people throughout history have spelled their names differently in different languages.

Also, would you say that someone writing a post in English (regardless of where you're from) should write "Handel" and not "Händel"?

Yes, Handel is ok for English, I wrote that in my post.