{"id":1577,"date":"2017-06-12T20:46:54","date_gmt":"2017-06-12T20:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www0.sun.ac.za\/languagecentre\/?p=1577"},"modified":"2020-09-23T13:53:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-23T12:53:00","slug":"capitalisation-of-titles-and-proper-names-in-afrikaans-and-english-how-does-it-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/capitalisation-of-titles-and-proper-names-in-afrikaans-and-english-how-does-it-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitalisation of titles and proper names in Afrikaans and English: How does it work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Often people are unsure about the capitalisation of titles in Afrikaans and English. Should it be P<\/strong>rof De Villiers or p<\/strong>rof De Villiers? An added headache is the capitalisation of proper names consisting of different parts (a surname such as De Villiers is a point in case) \u2013 do the same rules apply in Afrikaans and English?<\/p>\n

In English, titles (such as Mr, Mrs, Ms, Dr, Prof or Rev) are always capitalised: hence P<\/strong>rof De Villiers. Afrikaans, however, requires lowercase for titles; therefore one should write p<\/strong>rof De Villiers in a running sentence, although a title occurring at the beginning a sentence will of course be capitalised.<\/p>\n

Fortunately the rule on proper names consisting of more than one part is the same in English and Afrikaans. Imagine that it\u2019s all about a place holder, really, in the guise of either an initial or a first name. If there is a place holder, the first part of the surname needn\u2019t stand tall; it is allowed to \u2018relax\u2019 a little and instead start with a lowercase letter \u2013 consider for example the \u2018de\u2019 in Anja d<\/strong>e Jager, or Prof W d<\/strong>e Villiers. If no placeholder exists, the first part of the surname needs to man up and be capitalised, for example \u2018In her speech D<\/strong>e Jager said\u2026\u2019, or Prof D<\/strong>e Villiers. It doesn\u2019t matter whether a title precedes the surname, and the same principle holds for proper names consisting of more than two parts, such as De la Rey \u2013 whether used as first name or surname. For more examples and information on this, have a look at pages 29 to 32 in the Language Centre\u2019s Style Guide<\/em> (available here<\/a>). <\/p>\n

Below you\u2019ll find an infographic summarising these tips. Print<\/a> it and put it up somewhere as a reminder! <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Often people are unsure about the capitalisation of titles in Afrikaans and English. Should it be Prof De Villiers or prof De Villiers? An added headache is the capitalisation of proper names consisting of different parts (a surname such as De Villiers is a point in case) \u2013 do the same rules apply in Afrikaans…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9656,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,68,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dialogos","category-our-languages","category-writing-tips"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9657,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions\/9657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}