Talk:Karol Kot

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Polish names of at least three victims probably misspelled

We're told three of Kot's victims were a girl called "Malgosia" and two adult women called "Helena Velgen" and "Franchiska Levendovska". "Malgosia" should almost certainly be spelled "Małgosia" (with the Polish letter "ł" as in the name of another victim Leszek Całek, in which the letter is correctly used - Małgosia is a diminutive form of Małgorzata, the Polish equivalent of Margaret). As for the other two names, they both strike me as dubious, because the letter "v" does not occur in Polish and is replaced by "w" (for instance, the Polish equivalent of Eve or Eva is "Ewa"). "Velgen" (or "Welgen") doesn't look Polish at all, and I would expect "Lewendowska" rather than "Levendovska". As for "Franchiska", it looks like a serious misspelling of the name "Franciszka", the equivalent of English Frances or Italian Francesca. I tried to check all this in the Polish-language version of the article, but unfortunately none of these three names appears there (whereas Leszek Całek's does). I almost get the feeling that whoever wrote the English article never saw the original written names, but simply turned their sounds into the nearest English equivalent - and since (unlike Russian) Polish is not written in a different alphabet from English, there's no reason to have done such a thing.89.212.50.177 (talk) 12:05, 23 September 2018 (UTC) Just tried checking the Swedish-language version as well, but none of the victims' names appears there.89.212.50.177 (talk) 12:09, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. Yes, given that the names appear from English language sources, then Anglicisations of such are indeed possible/probable - and more so if the source is a non-written one too, as is the case here. The names are "correct" as per the source, although actual orthography is indeed another question (hence my recent addition of '...' marks). Further, Velgen is indeed possible as a name, since I assume not 100% of people living in Poland have a 'regular' Polish surname, or are all Polish citizens. Also, the Polish alphabet, as I understand it has 9 vowels and 23 consonants, which therefore does not match English exactly. If you are able to read Polish, I would recommend trying to find original sources (eg. newspaper or court documents) that support the spellings. Thanks. JabberJaw (talk) 10:25, 28 September 2018 (UTC)