Talk:Dan Laner

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I see someone moved this from Dan Laner to 'Dan Liner'. I'm not sure about general issues in transliteration from Hebrew to English, but most books in English refer to him as 'Laner'. I looked though my books on the '73 war, and all of:

• Chaim Herzog, The War of Atonement: October 1973, Little Brown, 1975
• Jerry Asher, Eric Hammel, Duel for the Golan: The 100-Hour Battle That Saved Israel, William Morrow, 1987
• Edgar O'Ballance, No Victor, No Vanquished: The Yom Kippur War, Presidio, 1991
• Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War, Schocken, 2004
• Ḥanokh Barṭov, Dado: 48 Years and 20 Days, Ma'ariv Book Guild, 1981

refer to him as 'Laner'. Of these, I consider Herzog's to be the possibly be the most significant, due to his role in the IDF: I can't find out for certain whether it was i) written in Hebrew, and then translated into English, or ii) written in English, but I shouldn't be surprised if it weren't the latter, as English is his native language.

Also, I have yet to look in every Israel-related book I have, but of the ones I have looked at, I can't yet find a single one that refers to him as 'Liner'. A Web search for "Dan Liner IDF" reveals almost no pages - except this one.

So, I suggest we move this page back to 'Laner' - what do people think? Noel (talk) 03:46, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Also, a few books from other periods:

• Jon Kimche, David Kimche, Both Sides of the Hill, Secker and Warburg, London, 1960; (re-printed as A Clash of Destinies, Praeger, New York, 1960)
• Dan Kurzman, Genesis 1948, World, New York, 1970

which also show him as 'Dan Laner'. Noel (talk) 18:09, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

• Ehud Avriel, Open the Gates, Atheneum, New York, 1975

refers to him as "Lanner", though. Noel (talk) 04:06, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

No comments on the proposed move back? Noel (talk) 17:27, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

I personally opened his memorial book at the Golani Museum in Israel. His name is spelled “לינר”. In English this is pronounced “Leiner”, whereas “Laner” does not accurately convey the correct vowels in the name. Dpb126948 (talk) 21:27, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

So, I'm curious, why did you move it to 'Dan Liner' then, instead of 'Dan Leiner'? Not important, let's move on.

I personally don't care whether his name is transliterated as 'Laner' or 'Leiner'. However, the point remains that works in English which refer to him generally seem to refer to him as 'Dan Laner'. (I'm curious as to why Herzog's book refers to him as "Laner", though - maybe because that was already the common transliteration?) It would seem to me that having his article at some other transliteration, even if arguably more correct, is therefore really non-optimal. Noel (talk) 04:06, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

I looked in the English editions of Israeli newspapers and only saw "Dan Laner". The catalogue of the National Library of Israel has 20 items with "Dan Laner" and none with "Dan Liner". Google finds no hits at all for "Dan Liner" in the .il domain, but many for "Dan Laner". This page on the Palmach website helpfully has "Laner Liner" but other pages on that site only have "Dan Laner". Overall it is obvious that the English WP:COMMONNAME is "Dan Laner" by a huge margin and I'm moving it back. Zero^talk 13:56, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Although Dpb is correct that לינר would be "Liner" without more information, family names have traditional pronunciations that don't necessarily follow common orthography. Most likely, "Laner" was his own choice. Whether or not that's a correct guess, we don't transliterate foreign words ourselves if we have reliable sources for the transliteration and in this case we have very many. Zero^talk 14:25, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Another source

In "Beacons in the Night: With the OSS and Tito's Partisans in Wartime Yugoslavia" by Franklin Lindsay, he is referred to as 'Dan Gatoni' (his undercover name) (second note, Chapter 4); it contains a few details of his time in Yugoslavia. That name was from his then-kibbutz, Ga'aton. His real name is given there as 'Dan Linar', but his ultimate IDF rank, and the year of death, match. Noel (talk) 00:10, 15 April 2025 (UTC)