Template:Did you know nominations/Hans Dessauer, John H. Dessauer

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Allen3 ^talk 11:32, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Hans Dessauer, John H. Dessauer

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... that the son of Hans Dessauer, a coloured paper manufacturer in Aschaffenburg, left Germany in 1929, changed his name to John H. Dessauer and wrote the book My Years with Xerox, The Billions Nobody Wanted?

Comment: both articles were created by Dr. Blofeld, John H. Dessauer substantially expanded by Rosiestep.

Created/expanded by Dr. Blofeld (talk), Rosiestep (talk). Nominated by Gerda Arendt (talk) at 13:08, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

AGF on German language and offline sources. English online sources verified. Length and age good. Both articles check out fine.
The hook could be more punchy. According to My Years With Xerox: The Billions Nobody Wanted (review). John Brooks. New York Times. Oct 17, 1971. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. p. BR52, "Dessauer in the flesh is a slangy, tangy man with a swift and incisive conversational style." You could say something less dry about him. And the story of Xerox is full of irony, humor, and drama. Renaming the fire extinguisher "scorch eliminator" so as not to scare customers away, for example. The hook also makes you wonder why he changed his name -- was it something hideous? Running from scandal? The article doesn't tell us -- he simply wanted to assimilate perhaps?
Just some suggestions. I believe the hook is satisfactory as it is. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 19:43, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment: A lot of name changing happens just because the locals can't pronounce the foreign name and/or the foreigner can't abide the way the locals pronounce his name. There are cases where a name is mangled beyond recognition. Marrante (talk) 10:10, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I just tweaked the capitalization on the book title in the hook, as per this. Marrante (talk) 10:22, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, both. I guess he changed his name for two reasons, to have one more "English" and not to be just the "jr.", but that is not sourced. Please go ahead and add slangy tangy to the article, your phrasing will be better, and I am unhappily involved in the PumpkinSky CCI, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:31, 6 February 2012 (UTC)