Two Writers With Two Dots Above Their Storied Last Names

Recognizing the birthdays of Charlotte Brontë and Louise Glück

What’s in a name? For the writers in this issue of Bidwell Hollow, the literal answer is two dots. Charlotte Brontë and Louise Glück have last names with punctuation symbols.

The dots in Glück are an umlaut. An umlaut is a mark in German or Hungarian indicating a different vowel pronunciation. In the case of Louise Glück, her father immigrated to the U.S…