Adam Ries - Name

Name

In today's usage, both variants of his name, "Ries" and "Riese" can be found. The latter is a grammatical relic from the time of the mathematician, where the names of people were also declined (the -e ending indicates the dative case), so the name "Ries" had the ending "-e" added when used in the German expression "nach Adam Riese", which is still used today. This expression means "according to Adam Ries" and it is used when speaking about simple arithmetic, e.g. zwei und zwei macht, nach Adam Riese, vier (two plus two is, according to Adam Ries, four). The "-e" added to his name is commonly not recognized as a declension ending today, however. Furthermore, the German word "Riese" can be translated as "giant" in English, thus inspiring a common tongue-in-cheek adaptation of the beforementioned saying, "nach Adam Riese und Eva Zwerg" ("according to Adam Giant and Eve Dwarf).

Since the spelling of names was not as fixed at that time as it is today, the spellings "Ris, "Rise", "Ryse" and even "Reyeß" are also sometimes found.