One thing that some people don't know is that in most languages [that have them], nobiliary particles¹ are neither capitalised (unless they appear at the beginning of the name; i.e. when initials are omitted) nor alphabetised. In Dutch, for example, *van*, *de*, *van der*, etc are ignored for alphabetisation purposes.

**Example.** (Dutch) *B. L. van der Waerden* should be under W, not V. Another format² would be *Waerden, B. L. van der*.

**Example.** (German) *C. L. F. von Lindemann* should be under L, not V.

**Example.** (French) *P. de Fermat* should be under F, not D.

However, it seems that sometimes theorems named after people with such names may or may not (presumably depending on the country) drop the particle altogether: e.g. *Fermat's little theorem*, *Lindemann–Weierstraß theorem*. In (modern) Dutch, you would never do this; e.g. *De Bruijn–Erdős theorem* (note that *De* is capitalised, since the initials are omitted).

**Remark.** I find it entertaining to see that some authors are aware of these rules and others aren't (or does it depend on their BibTeX setup?). Next time you try to find a name of this form in the references, take a look at how the author alphabetised it.

¹Their name is somewhat misleading: they do not always indicate nobility (e.g. in the Netherlands they don't).

²In Dutch, I know that this is how one would do this. I don't know the conventions of other countries, but my guess is that they are similar.