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I've noticed over the years my perception of "correct capitalization of proper nouns" has been challenged, as I've interacted with more cultures and languages.

For example:

  • Days of the week, in Spanish.
  • The language name, español.
  • Romanized names of people from "Indian" cultures. (I use quotes, as I'm unsure of their actual origin. Maybe Middle Eastern?)
    • sravan prince
    • shrikanth shrikanth
    • mohammad kumar
    • meera azaruddin
  • Those same romanized names, written by both India and English writers, are inconsistently capitalized.

When I write these proper nouns, in an English discussion, are the rules I've learned in English class "thrown out"?

In those discussions, should they conform to English rules?

Is this not a big deal and everyone is cool with it?

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A little investigation of usage on the internet would seem to reveal the following rules:

  • When you are using a proper name in another language, for which there is an English equivalent of that name, then you are effectively dropping into that language for that one word. There is an English equivalent of lunes (i.e. 'Monday'). So you would write "The Spanish for Monday is lunes"
  • When you are using a name which doesn't have an English equivalent, you keep the English capitalization. the actor Sravan Prince, for example, capitalizes his name when writing in English.

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