User:Dioskorides/sandbox 2
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Joseph Gauss -
Sophie Gauss née Erythropel
(1818–1883)
Joseph's wife -
Wilhelmina Gauss -
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Eugene Gauss -
Henrietta Gauss née Fawcett
(1817–1909)
Eugene's wife -
William Gauss -
Luise Gauss née Fallenstein
(1813–1883)
William's wife -
Therese Gauss -
Constantin Staufenau
(1809–1886)
Therese's husband
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Joseph Gauss -
Wilhelmina Gauss
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Eugene Gauss
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William Gauss
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Therese Gauss
Failed verification tag on the children names: I found no evidence of Wilhelm being called William, and Eugene's birth name is not Eugen. I also have doubts on who was nicknamed Minna: the second wife or the daughter?
failed verification|date=June 2024|reason=The names are likely incorrect: the Science article refers to the second child as Wilhelm, and Dunnington also says he was known as Wilhelm the whole life. Where does William come from? Minna seems to be the nickname of the child from the first wife rather than the one of the second wife. Finally the German name of Eugene does not seem to be Eugen, rather Peter Samuel Marius Eugenius per Dunnington
I see, one of the most difficult Wikipedia problems is pursuing us, too: the "correct names". There has already been a great discussion on the correct writing of Gauss/Gauß (see Talk pages). Now the Christian names.
In general, we have to distinguish a. the Christian names of the birth registration, b. the usual naming with only one or two of them, c. the calling with pet names, d. other adopted names by reason of emigration or adoption of pseudonyms, e. spelling variants of these names. Now: What is a "correct" or "incorrect" name? In my opinion a name is incorrect, if it has never been used or a variant is given that has never been written. But with this, we have a considerable variety of "correct" names.
Now to the Gauss children. Dunnington gives the full collection of their Christian names on page 102. All the last three children have four first names, and Dunnington gives their common used names Therese, Wilhelm, and Eugene. I don't know why he wrote Eugene instead of Eugen; of course, these names were used with German pronounciation. I presume that Dunnington was not aware of the very different pronounciation of Eugene and Eugen, and the orthographical similarity is much greater than between Wilhelm and William, so he didn't take care of it, so this is a simple mistake of Dunnington (and of Cajory, who gives Theresa as another variant). But when both sons had emigrated to the U.S., they used the English version Eugene and William of their first names. Look here or here, obviously both of them were named Eugene and William in the U.S.
In Germany, the calling name "Eugen" was used as the short and common variant of the Greek-Latin "Eugenius", given to him with the birth registration, but the Latin suffix -us (or: -ius) is usually omitted in German common use. "Wilhelm" was the only common name for the last son, you can find in German literature and in the letters of his siblings, but he himself finished the letters to his father with "C.W.Gauss". The inscription of his grave monument shows "Charles W. Gauss". This may indicate that his American calling name was rather Charles than William, but I don't have any scientific publidation for it.