Hanover, Hannover

In early December I’ll be in Germany, presenting a poster and short talk at “(Digital) Humanities Revisited – Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Age”. The whole trip is generously funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, which among its various activities supporting research in academia and beyond, puts on a series of conferences at the Herrenhausen Palace in Hanover.

Or is it Hannover? For putting into Google and getting relevant results, both spellings seem to work just fine. But I keep encountering one when I put in the other, causing mild curiosity. Wikipedia gives this helpful explanation:

Hanover is the traditional English spelling. The German spelling (with a double n) is becoming more popular in English; recent editions of encyclopedias prefer the German spelling and local government uses the German spelling on English websites. The English pronunciation is applied to both the German and English spellings, which is different from German pronunciation (emphasis on the second syllable not the first and “v” pronounced as “f”). The traditional English spelling should always be used in historical contexts, especially when referring to the British House of Hanover.

The title of my presentations will be “Literature, Lexicography, and the Life of Words,” in anticipation of my upcoming research project. A copy of the poster will be posted on this site shortly after.

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