Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2025 May 17

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May 17

威寧彝族回族苗族自治縣

How do I interpret the name of Weining Yi, Hui, and Miao Autonomous County? Is this an autonomous county by the name of "Weining Yi, Hui, and Miao", or is it a Yi, Hui, and Miao Autonomous County by the name of "Weining", or is it the Weining Yi section of "Hui and Miao Autonomous County"? The article title sounds like the first option, the infobox sounds like the second, and the first sentence of the main text sounds like the third. Nyttend (talk) 08:15, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Must be the second of your options. Weining (威宁) is the name of the main town and county seat; "Autonomous County" (zìzhìxiàn, 自治縣) is its administrative status; and "Yi" (彝), Hui (回) and "Miao" (苗) are three ethnicities presumably living there, who are the subjects of its autonomy status. Note that in the long name you quoted in the title, the three characters for "Yi", "Hui" and "Miao" are each followed by 族 (zú), the term for "ethnicity" or "tribe". The shorter version of the county name given in the infobox is just "威宁县", Wēiníng xiàn, i.e. "Weining county" (县 and 縣 being the simplified and traditional versions of the same word). Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:27, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd parse it symbolically as "Weining (Yi + Hui + Miao) Autonomous County", until 1954 officially just "Weining County" (威宁县), still a common abbreviation. The French Wikipedia uses "le xian yi, hui et miao de Weining", meaning "the Yi, Hui and Miao autonomous county of [i.e. "known as"] Weining" – rather explicitly the second option. BTW, the character 縣 in the Chinese spelling in the heading of this section is the traditional one. The official spelling in China uses the simplified character 县 also for the full name.  ​‑‑Lambiam 11:10, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thousands separator apostrophe in English

I just discovered Guns, germs and steel. A short history of everybody for the last 13'000 years. Is there any anglophone context (other than learners wrongly importing foreign conventions) in which an apostrophe is used as a thousands separator? Thousands separator mentions the use of an apostrophe but doesn't say in which regions or languages it's used. Nyttend (talk) 20:40, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find an Anglophone example, but see Decimal_separator#Examples_of_use. DuncanHill (talk) 20:50, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The book covers that I can find (for the original and later UK paperback editions) have "13,000", with a comma as the separator. Where did you see an apostrophe in the UK subtitle?

According to the German Wikipedia, Switzerland uses either a nonbreaking space or a (straight) apostrophe for the thousands separator. The instructions given by the Federal Chancellery of Switzerland for the preparation of official texts in French explicitly forbid the use of the apostrophe,^[1] thereby implying it is used.  ​‑‑Lambiam 23:04, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

C++ uses apostrophe, maybe because other characters would have caused problems. The feature was added in C++14 and it was important to not break pre-existing code. 2601:644:8581:75B0:A6C3:D267:84F9:123E (talk) 23:13, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Unless it is clear from the context that a number is a natural number, writing e.g. 12345 as either "12.345" or "12,345" is asking for trouble also in texts in plain natural language.  ​‑‑Lambiam 12:16, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When the context is the English language in day-to-day settings, "12 345" would be confusing. I've never seen any usage other than "12,345" in English texts written for day-to-day purposes; "12.345" is restricted to non-English usage, and "12 345" is restricted to technical contexts and discussions about punctuation. Nyttend (talk) 20:11, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. However, I think we're still unclear about the apostrophe version you mentioned in the OP. Our article says the title of the work mentioned is "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (subtitled A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years in Britain)...". The redirect you used was created by a sockpuppet (one of literally hundreds) of a banned user. A cursory glance suggests they got interested in that book for a day in 2016. If that's the only place you've seen the apostrophe number separator, I think you can safely ignore it. Matt Deres (talk) 18:58, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Le Sueur

Among other things, Le Sueur is a brand of canned vegetables in the US, but it is also a not-that-rare French surname. Per Wiktionary, wikt:sueur means sweat or perspiration. Is that really the origin of this name? Asking because of the canned vegetables. Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:A6C3:D267:84F9:123E (talk) 23:09, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The canned vegetables are named for Le Sueur, Minnesota, where the canning company was located, which was named for a French explorer. I doubt that the surname came from the word for sweat, since that's feminine in gender (la sueur). I'm finding some indication that its an occupational surname from an obsolete term meaning "shoemaker". Deor (talk) 00:36, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If, on that first disambiguation page you linked, you click under Other uses on the link Le Sueur (surname), you will find a list of Articles about people with that surname. At the bottom is a collapsed box which, when expanded, gives an array of "Surnames associated with the occupations of cobbler / shoemaker / cordwainer", including in the Romance (languages) section "Surnames ultimately from Latin "sutor": . . . Le Sueur". [Latin "sutor" means 'shoemaker', according to my Latin dictionaries.]

This suggests that the modern French word meaning "sweat" has a different origin. (Or maybe was derived from sueur because cobblers were thought to sweat a lot, or something.)

The second line under that Other uses section refers to the canned vegetable brand in question as being associated with the Green Giant brand, whose own page mentions that both originate from Le Sueur, Minnesota, named in honour of Pierre-Charles Le Sueur. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.170.37 (talk) 00:27, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For some reason, my comment was inserted above yours, even though I posted it after yours. (I've had this happen before, perhaps because I started my comment before you did but dawdled around and didn't finish it until after you posted.) The French word for sweat comes from Lat. sudor, not from sutor. Deor (talk) 01:18, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I've seen this sort of thing happen before, too. No worries. This case is a good example of the fact that words and names (place or personal) which appear identical now may have converged from different forms in the past, which is why so much 'folk etymology' (modern or ancient) is often mistaken. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.170.37 (talk) 16:32, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The French suffix -eur forms masculine agent nouns from the stem of the present participle of verbs. For example, tuer ("to kill'), present participle tuant, gives rise to the noun tueur ("killer"). So le sueur meaning "the sweater" (sweating person) would have been a regular devolopment from the verb suer, suant, but was possibly inhibited by the formation of the feminine noun sueur from Latin sudor (which is masculine in Latin; for the reverse gender swap, we have Latin feminine arbor with the French masculine descendant arbre).  ​‑‑Lambiam 12:02, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Side note, I suspect the posting order may have to do with when you started writing your response, rather than when you posted it. GalacticShoe (talk) 04:25, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hanks & Hodges A Dictionary of Surnames (Oxford 1988) connects it to German Sauter, "a shoemaker or cobbler (rarely a tailor)". —Tamfang (talk) 20:32, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A word which has only survived as a family name and according to de:Sauter (Familienname) disappeared in its original meaning in the 15th century. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 08:53, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The German name seems to be an early Latin borrowing rather than a cognate, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 09:29, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks everyone. 2601:644:8581:75B0:8F01:9261:FCD:4BB9 (talk) 18:50, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]