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Three Hapsburgs and a Reporter Walk into a Canadian Vault

nytimes.com

26 pointssamclemens39 comments

I didn’t understand the angle of this article until I realized it was “Times Insider”, a sort of behind the scenes. The actual story is here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/arts/design/florentine-di...

https://archive.ph/V2Ehj

https://archive.ph/dCcMq

More details here (playable video of the "pale-yellow" Florentine diamond)

https://highjewellerydream.com/the-unveiling-of-the-habsburg...

How can a paper like the New York Times not even get the name of dynasty right and this across multiple articles?

It's the House of Habsburg, not Hapsburg.

Already addressed: "While the family spells its last name with a B, the New York Times stylebook spells Hapsburg with a P, which brought no shortage of scolding emails upon publication."

How can the New Iork Tymes just choose how they spell things? That's messed up.

These idiosyncrasies are amusing but they do have a habit of dominating the conversation. E.g. the New Yorker (I think) uses diaeresis to represent distinct syllables resulting in words like “Cooperate” being decorated.

Or that chap here who insists on using 5 digit years.

But some go missed. My personal favourite is that I prefer to fully close clauses within quotations.

> The President said, “I will never bomb the moon!”.

The same way they just choose to anglicize Владимир Путин and בִּנְיָמִין נְתַנְיָהוּ, although there are certainly a plenty of much better examples.

Like the way the French and English write "Cologne" for the city Germans call "Köln". The NYT is just adhering to a different standard, not making up anything new.

The Habsburg Family never used a different writing system, though.

They did use a different language with different pronunciation rules, though. I'm not convinced that sticking with the original spelling is obviously better. Bibis’s first name certainly doesn't accurately transliterate to Benjamin, and that's probably fine.

They use the name "Habsburg". Who is the NYT to tell them they are in fact not "Habsburg"?

I don't think the NYT is telling them that.

But I bet they used the metric system!

Probably, but only since the 19th century ;)

Addressed, but not fixed.

It's not at all unusual for English-language press to anglicize names.

But it's not any more anglicized than Habsburg would be. I mean, English does have a letter B, doesn't it? And as far as I know, the difference between B and P is the same as in German.

The first "B" in "Habsburg" is pronounced rather more like the letter "P" than the letter "B".

Not where I live (which is near Habsburg). I would pronounce it the same as the B in -burg. Where are you from (if you care to answer, no problem if not)

That's interesting, I'm not originally German but went to school in Berlin since I was 7 and always heard it pronounced as "Haaps-burk".

I'd think this is just because of how final obstruent devoicing works in German, to me it just seems like the obvious natural way to pronounce the word.

Devoicing is more common in northern dialects

https://youtu.be/9-BBgc_uBZQ?t=1m11s

Seems to be there tho just very subtle

EDIT: it's why GP is not "steffi1977" XD

I think it's a pretty strong indicator of the low level of care the authors put into this, so I'll upvote the grey parent. Imo it's embarassing, but at the same time the NYT hasn't been what I would consider "quality journalism" for quiet a while, so I guess it's par for the course

German usage

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hapsburg%2CHab...

(In my head NYT is an anachronism from the 60s but I've a feeling the editors would be more than fine with that characterization)

That’s interesting, but since the Habsburg is an actual castle (burg) here in German speaking Switzerland, there is only one right way of spelling it.

English is pronounced differently than German, so there isn't "only one right way of spelling it".

If you pronounce Hapsburg in English, it also sounds wrong.

It sounds much less wrong than if you were to pronounce the p as a b instead.

Ah right, here's the Schloss Habsburg page for those interested

https://www.museumaargau.ch/en/habsburg-castle

(Winter hours apply?)

There's a middle German word hap (ford) which could make the NYT correct in 1100 :)

It's on par with spelling Koeln Cologne imho pity those guys

Hap seems to be an old word for Hafen (i.e. port). Now the Habsburg is on a mountain and no ports in sight ;)

Also, according to historians, the name probably stems from "Habesburg" (haben = have in English).

There's also a myth that it stems from Habicht (Eurasian goshawk), but that is likely just that, a myth.

In either case, the castle was never spelled with a p, even in the middle ages. So there's no way to spin this spelling into something that makes sense. It's just wrong.

Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_(Burg)#Geschichte

Nah I just took en.wiki's word for it which is always dangerous );

If I really have to push the theory, it would be an old high German form of Haupt (referring to an cowshead), since a hill can be head-shaped :)

Otoh I would not go against the word of someone who has probably seen the medieval docs

Edit: de.wiki link you gave mentions the ford

Wahrscheinlich ist der Name der Burg vom althochdeutschen Wort hab oder haw abgeleitet, das «Flussübergang» bedeutet. Damit ist eine Furt bei Altenburg gemeint

> Edit: de.wiki link you gave mentions the ford

Oh you’re right. But that's spelled "hab" as well, still no p in sight ;)

Yeah, the en.wiki guy was probably just trying to capture the pronunciation (devoicing) in his dialect

They are called Habsburg-Lothringen actually. In the passport

The initial reportage couldn't resist the "lost jewellery" tag when they were never lost, just not openly discussed.

I think it's correct. They were lost to the general public and were considered missing. When a smaller yellow diamond surfaced there was speculation that it's the Florentine diamond that was cut.

I'm not in the jewellery business but I would be very surprised if the diamond industry didn't have a pretty good idea where things lay. That kind of multi-caret stone has a premium. You need to know provenance. The risk it's a blood diamond or stolen is very high.

Lost to wider society? Yea, I can buy that but it's a stretch.

It's not "lost" the way a medieval triptych hanging in an alms house for centuries and found to be worth millions is a "lost masterpiece" or works coming out of safe deposit boxes where some GI has hoarded loot after ww2. The titular holders decided to put a time lock on their deposit box but had clear title to the assets.

Does anyone look at all these jewels and feel a bit dismissive? I get the idea for why they used to be valuable but they look incredibly gaudy and seem very much like trading beads to the Native Americans or whatever.

I get the historical significance but they don’t look good to me. Like Sue the T Rex looks cool from a distance but up close she’s got all these holes in her skull from parasites. Awful! I appreciate the beast’s skeleton for its significance but her skull is a horrid thing close up aesthetically.

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