Dæg wrote:

>For what its worth, I've frequently seen oe and ue used by the ö and ü
>impared.
>

Those are the conventions that were used when every one was using
type writers that lacked these "umlauted" characters. Very frequent
for Germans visiting England, USA, etc..

Thus Müller would become Mueller, and Österreich Oesterreich.
(or even Ötztal -> Oetztal, cf. "Oetzi")

This convention was also used by Scandinavians.
Thus, the Dane Sørensen checking through the U.S. immigration
service would spell his name as "Soerensen" by default,
though the requirement of simplicity would in most cases
eventually lead to the form "Sorensen", which you will see
is what many immigrant families did.


ASCII is a later phenomenon, and means that each letter
was assigned a number (A=65, B=66, etc) But basically
ASCII is just the letters of the old typewriter, conveniently
arranged.

I agree with Heidrun that Smidja would be the most natural
choice. In Norway we also say "smed" = a smith. Also in
Germany "Schmied". But Smithja or Smithia could also be used,
especially in English speaking countries, where one might
want to emphasize the meaning of the word. In the oldest
manuscripts it is frequently written with "thorn":
Smiþia. This was for instance the case with the Edda
manuscript of the poem about Volund the smith.

Best regards
Keth