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I just did a quick search on this and apparently the misspellings are German surnames as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reimann

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinmann

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I just don't understand how it happens. If they had ever taken an intro to real analysis class they would learn to spell his name. If they were just parroting what an AI told them... shouldn't they still just say his name? An individual could just be dyslexic or mistaken but it seems to be a substantial volume. I guess they just don't care enough about it to commit the correct name to memory, only remembering the "pattern" of the name and filling in the spelling via guesswork?
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My last name is Hebert.

There’s about a 1 in 10 chance when someone spells it (or says it) they say Herbert.

Even in situations where they just read it or I just said it.

I’ve had Herbert soccer trophies, health insurance cards, etc.

The mind fills in a lot of blanks and doesnt always get them right.

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My last name is Kvick - the Swedish word for quick. I live in Sweden. I get a lot of people thinking my name is spelled Kvik, Quick, Kwick, ... My father once got a mail addressed to Mr. Kvack (Swedish for quack, like a duck).
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I sympathize. -- Not Barber
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Maybe they skipped straight to Lebeg integrals.
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Thanks for the laugh!
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very good lol
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Autocorrect might be doing it
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deleted
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iPhone would be my guess
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People just don’t spell that seriously buddy, especially when it is so immaterial to the point.
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My point is it is crazy to make public claims about how important or not important a mathematical result is when you can't spell Riemann. Yes, it technically doesn't matter, but it betrays a damning lack of familiarity with introductory mathematics.
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Then ignore them? I dont get these types of mysteries. It's easy enough to find math majors these days to ask them their opinions on things. There're so many of them. You most likely know some from your highschool. They'd probably say the same things though, or even freak out harder.

While it takes a good math person to make breakthroughs it's much easier to find someone who has a feel of whats important/hard and not. Even a mediocre math major/master is far more authoritative than an expert at adjacent fields (CS,physics). Or to listen to webdevs 'ai skeptics' or whatever on the internet.

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You’re (as Claude would say) absolutely right, and I suspect the original commenter has no idea what they’re talking about.
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Yes sure but they are different surnames and pronounced differently.
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I didn't mean to oppose OP's point, I just found it interesting as a non-German speaker!
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Human brains seem to have somewhat similar failure modes to LLMs and how many 'r's in strawberry.
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They're mathematicians, not linguists :)
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The mathematicians don't make this mistake, I assure you. I doubt there is a math professor on planet earth who would spell Riemann as Reinmann. In fact, I imagine no one who has ever heard the name pronounced would do so.
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One of the best mathematicians I've had the pleasure of learning under added 6 to 7 and got 15 during a lecture... I assure you they're capable of misspelling last names too.

Mathematicians aren't exactly known for being well rounded.

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Oh god, that reminded me of my linear algebra teacher in college. Doing matrix multiplication by hand and ending up with 9x6 = 45, and then having to direct him to the cell with the wrong number. Loved the topic, hated the class.
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Pure mathematicians getting arithmetic wrong is a bit of a meme it’s so common. I don’t think it’s the same as a misspelling of a popular mathematician, not that either are indicative of much tbh.
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google "Grothendieck prime"
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Still, enough misspell Lebesgue as Lebesque.
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Uh oh, no true scottsman....
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It's just a name you write so many times as a math undergraduate or first year graduate student due to the number of load bearing results and objects named for him. The name even appears in lower division coursework

Yes, you can be an amateur mathematician who manages to avoid such classes and may not know those results or objects, but if you haven't read and written down the name enough to avoid habitually misspelling it, you are outing yourself as a meat proxy unless you are dyslexic.

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I regularly heard lots of names during my 3 year math undergrad degree. I couldn't remember how to spell many of them then and can spell fewer now. I imagine most people on the course were similar, and me nor no one I knew were dyslexic.

Mostly we wrote initials in our notes and the exams didn't ask about them. The lecturers only wrote initials on the chalkboard after maybe writing the name once when introducing it the first time. We weren't there to do mathematical history and remember names or something.

Google existed then and now and we could look them up if needed.

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If they’re mathematicians they have written this name down about a 100 different times throughout a standard Real Analysis course. Riemann was foundational in that field.
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“How many Ns in Riemann?”
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Let's figure it out! First, draw little boxes over all the letters. Then add up their areas. Then make the boxes smaller and repeat, until you have forgotten how to count.
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[flagged]
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Don't be a jerk.
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Okay but who cares? Results are results.

If the proofs work thennwe can put them to work doing more things.

It is not particularly important that Einstein discovered relativity, just that it was discovered (Maxwell was very close).

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