Talk:Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay

Advocacy of setting up a Russian colony in the Pacific

I am working on Australia-Russia relations at the moment (in userspace), and in researching the Russian Empire era, I can across this which details little known information in regards to Miklukho-Maklai's advocating the setting up of Russian colonies in the Pacific (New Guinea and Australia). If anyone who is editing the article wants to include this material, it would be good.

Correct spelling of Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay

There has been a lot of different English spellings of the surname - including poor Russian transliterations. I propose there is only one correct spelling of the surname:

Miklouho-Maclay

Apparently, this is the latin transliterated spelling which appears on his passport after leaving Imperial Russia for the University of Heidelberg. This is the spelling used by Miklouho-Maclay himself in English-language publications at the time eg. the Linnean Society of New South Wales (See for eg. Miklouho-Maclay, N. 1884. 'The Barometro Araucano from the Chiloe Islands'. Proceedings of the Linnean Scoeity of New South Wales, 8:462-463.) and in his personal correspondence (see To the Editor. In contemporary Australian newspapers of the time he was referred to always as "Baron de Miklouho-Maclay". He himself used the surname Miklouho-Maclay when writing to newspapers (see: Argus newspaper article).

Miklouho-Maclay's grandsons in Australia always used Maclay, while sometimes using de Miklouho-Maclay. There still is a de Miklouho-Maclay Prize which is awarded to the student of New South Wales who achieved the best overall result in the National Titration Competition.

This is also the spelling used by his contemporary friend E. Thomassen in the biography written in 1882 - while Miklouho-Maclay was still alive. Thomassen notes in his foreword that this spelling was the result of a slight error in Maclay's passport, and this became "the name by which he is known to the scientific world" (Thomassen, E. S. (1882), A Biographical Sketch of Nicholas de Miklouho Maclay the Explorer, Brisbane).

Miklouho-Maclay is the most commonly used spelling in various English-language biographies, as well as many Australian government records. For example, the Heritage Council of NSW (see Wyoming where he lived), the NSW Department of Lands and the Geographical Names Board (eg. Miklouho-Maclay Park in Sydney).

Nicholas, Nikolai, Nicolai or Mykola?

Having established his correct surname in English, it is a bit harder to agree on his first name, as a number of first (Christian) names have been used. What is certain, is that during his lifetime in the press, 3 different variants were used, in the following order of importance:

1. "Nicholas de Miklouho-Maclay" — this is the most accurate name, as it was the only one that Miklouho-Maclay himself consistently used when writing to Australian newspapers (see for eg.: article in the Argus). This was also the name used by Miklouho-Maclay's friend Thomassen in his biography written while Miklouho-Maclay was alive.
2. "M. de Miklouho-Maclay" — this was also very commonly used in Australian newspapers of the time (eg. Argus article). It is interesting to speculate whether this was the initial for "Mykola" the Ukrainian version of Nicholas.
3. No first name, just "Baron de Miklouho-Maclay", which was commonly used in Australian newspapers about him.
4. Just the prefix "N" or "N.N" — this seems to be a later invention and seems to have first been used by Greenop in a 1945 publication.

All later version of "Nikolai", "Nicolai" are more recent Soviet or Russian English transliteration constructs, which did not seem to be used while he was alive. --Pkravchenko (talk) 11:29, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Maclay

It seems that no one has noticed the Scottish surname. According to one of his descendants, who had an illustrious career as a newsreader for the ABC in Australia, one of his ancestors was a Scot who migrated to Russia in times past. there was a good deal of Baltic trade going on from Scotland in the past. ªªªª — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.36.33.53 (talk) 09:46, 29 March 2015 (UTC) http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/08/1091903444061.htmlªªªª — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.36.33.53 (talk) 09:51, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually, his Scottish ancestor didn't migrate to Russia. He was on his Zaporozhian Cossacks side (but I'd have to trawl through a lot of old books to find RS for this: something not expressly on my agenda at the moment). Scottish highlanders were amongst the many non-Slavic ethnic groups who joined the Zaporozhian Cossacks (in fact, I know I have a Scottish ancestor in my lineage who'd joined up in the same way). It was not unusual for serfs, black slaves, Jews, Turkic, Asiatic, etc. to join up. Cossacks are a sub-ethnic group in their own rite, and certainly were/are admixtures of a large number of minorities. Very cosmopolitan... --Iryna Harpy (talk) 05:11, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

By all accounts, the Scottish lineage is a legend that (like many others) Nicolas didn't want to disprove. No documents exist proving it. Generally, the exact story of Maclay remains unclear. We do know that he was born just Miklouha (whatever spelling), but he started using Maclay while studying in Germany, i.e. before his first voyage. For this reason, BTW, I'm going to mark as doubtful and then remove the following passage from the introduction: The Sinhalese endowed him with a second surname, Maclay, which means "giver of food," which is likely false, and even if not, is not relevant to the origin of this name. Sergey Khantsis (talk) 14:16, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

@Sergey Khantsis: Actually, I think I need to go through this article again. The last time I edited it here, much of this uncited content was not here. There appears to have been a lot of WP:OR introduced, so I'm going to simply remove the "giver of food" business for starters. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:29, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Clarification of the nomeclature for non-Eastern Slavic editors

Ukrainian: Микола Миколайович Миклухо-Маклай = Mykola Mikolaiovych Myklukho-Maklai. Mykola is his christian name (Mykola being the Ukrainian variant of Nicholas) and Mikolaiovych is his patronymic (son of Mykola/son of Nicholas). His surname, Myklukho-Maklay, is hyphenated. I'm not going to go into the grammatical rationale, but it's an expressly a Ukrainian convention also used in the Russian rendering of his surname (i.e., the surname is actually Myklukha-Maklay).

Russian: Николай Николаевич Миклухо-Маклай = Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maklai. Again, Nikolai Nikolaevich are the christian name and patronymic. Miklukho-Maklai.

In order to avoid problems with the various naming conventions taken from the period of the Russian Empire, the English WP:COMMONNAME is used for his first name (not Nikolai or Mykola).

His actual surname was simply Myklukha. It's not a diminutive for Mykola/Nikolai... it's just plain confusing for anyone trying to work out when they're copyediting. There's been much speculation as to when, why and what the Maclay is about. I don't think it's worth developing the theories as to why he appended it. Amongst the prominent theories is that of a Scotsman captured by the Zaporizhian Cossacks during a battle who joined their ranks and became a famous cossack himself. Whatever the reason, hyphenated names are an extreme exception to the rule in Eastern Slavic culture.

I hope this clarifies matters (erhem, yes, Madam Harpy, it's as clear as mud) for anyone trying to copyedit this article. Happy editing! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:09, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

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A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

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• Miklukho-Maklai monument in Malyn.jpg

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