At 23/11/2002, Philip Strong wrote: >I have tracked down some 1870's letters written around Gayndah, Qld by my g-grandfather WEDEMEYER, (b. 1825 in Goslar near Hannover, Germany). The letters were in English language and in a typical rounded English script and addressed to the Qld Lands Department. Significantly, on four occasions he signs his name with a definite umlaut over the Y of WEDEMEYER.... two vertical strokes. A research archivist from Germany tells me that she has found the Y umlaut in 17th century archives "very often" and it was not found in any particular region. However, I still don't know how it would have been definitively pronounced in the context of "WEDEMEYER". Can anyone advise? I asked lecturers from the German Departments of New England and Sydney Universities for comment. New England Uni said: "a retired colleague here in Armidale who is a scholar of middle high German, old high German, old Norse (etc) thinks it could be a flourish of the baroque era. At that time capitalisation came in for nouns - and most probably for names - and hence some embellishments may have taken place. But that is only his guess. As to the pronunciation, English speakers would definitely say Wedemeyer as 'ear', whereas German speakers would pronounce it like Meier/Meyer: 'mire'. Sydney Uni said: "The two strokes written above the 'Y' cannot strictly be called an Umlaut, since Umlaut is defined as a rounding of the vowel, and an 'i'-sound, as represented by your 'Y', does not admit of rounding. My NEU colleague is quite certainly right in describing it as a scriptal flourish. At all times in central Germany (i.e. the Hannover region),at least since the 16th centur! y, the syllable will have been pronounced like English 'mire'. There does seem to be a tendency for such names in Australia to attract the pronunciation 'mere'." So there we are... perhaps it is just baroque ornamentation without function? Does anyone else have these "scriptal flourishes" in old letters by their ancestors? -- ***Philip Strong***Email:plstrong@pnc.com.au***Blue Mountains, Australia*** German Interest: WEDEMEYER. Most of the WEDEMEYERS in the Queensland telephone book are related through George Henry Louis WEDEMEYER of Gayndah Qld.