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I was surprised to learn here that the man responsible for "König's Lemma" was Hungarian, and spelled his last name Kőnig (with a different accent on the o), presumably with the same accent that occurs in Paul Erdős' last name. I still remember being taught that this accent was not an umlaut, and had a special LaTeX command.

Now, in the Konig-case, what adds more to the confusion is that we mathematicians historically have used the (incorrect) umlaut spelling when referring to the the tree lemma. Moreover, Kőnig's father apparently spelled his name with an umlaut (according to a comment by Asaf Karagila here).

Should we as a math community correct the spelling of "König's Lemma" to match the name of the one honored by it?

Edited to add: The story gets even weirder. Kőnig sometimes spelled his name (or, at least, the editors spelled his name) as König in some of his publications. For the 1927 publication in question, the marking on his name, on the first page, is hard to make out, but appears to be the Hungarian marking. But on the running header throughout the paper, the markings are clearly the German umlaut!

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    $\begingroup$ changing the spelling would be a way to distinguish that result from other results that would otherwise have the same name: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/König%27s_theorem $\endgroup$
    – Carlo Beenakker
    Commented Aug 29, 2019 at 21:08
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    $\begingroup$ Your source may be correct about the spelling of the man's last name, bit it misspells his first name as "Dénis". $\endgroup$
    – bof
    Commented Aug 29, 2019 at 21:52
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    $\begingroup$ There is a simple rule on spelling of names that I try to observe: if a person wrote papers in a language using Latin alphabet, spell in the same way s/he did himself/herself. $\endgroup$
    – Alexandre Eremenko
    Commented Aug 29, 2019 at 22:34
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    $\begingroup$ This question is greatly complicated by matters of history and nationality. The name König does not come from the Hungarian language, but from German. Kőnig is a transliteration of König into Hungarian that must have been chosen for phonetic reasons (the ö and ő both exist in Hungarian with different pronunciations). Probably Julius König/Gyula Kőnig considered these names just two translations of the same name into German and Hungarian, respectively. Also, he died before WWI, so Hungary and Austria were still the same country. $\endgroup$
    – Robert Furber
    Commented Aug 29, 2019 at 23:23
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    $\begingroup$ Another mathematical illustration of the point @Robert made: Lipót Fejér's ... father was Samu (or Samuel) Weiss.... The reader will have noticed that Fejér's father had the name Weiss and, indeed, Lipót Fejér was given the name Leopold Weiss when he was born. He changed his name around 1900 to make himself more Hungarian. This was standard practice carried out at that time to show solidarity with Hungarian culture. Weiss in German means "white" while the Hungarian for white is "feher" but he chose the name "Fejér" which is an archaic spelling for the Hungarian for "White". $\endgroup$
    – Gerry Myerson
    Commented Aug 30, 2019 at 3:00

1 Answer 1

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In A tale of three eras: The discovery and rediscovery of the Hungarian Method Harold W. Kuhn adresses the issue under point 4. Who was Dénes Konig? and clarifies that the correct spelling is with the Hungarian "double acute" and not the German "umlaut" that appears in the German word for "king".

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    $\begingroup$ Somehow I missed this answer. That letter, where Konig himself says to use the Hungarian double acute, makes it clear which to use. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – Pace Nielsen
    Commented Mar 9, 2021 at 18:22

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