I was renaming some mp3's, and it hit me. If you were to write that on a driver's license for examp, you leave the de lowercase, right?

Just a thought to dwell on: these names like van mean from or of, sometimes son of. This was bothering me because in the Talmud, people were called the son of in that time, e.g. Eliezer ben Yehuda, and their son would be the son of Yehuda.. really no last names. Today, you could see a few people with the word "ben" in their lastnames, but it's static. I'm really wondering now if it was the same in other cultures to name after the father as a surname or an identifier. I checked on freetranslation.com, and 'van' came out "from". Ibn means son of in Arabic, and Bar means son of in Aramaic, and i'm curious if there are other variations.
Anyone have a more to add? This is real cool beans :>

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