Introduction

(Ernst Louis) Etienne Laspeyres was Professor ordinarius of Economics and Statistics or ‘State Sciences’ and cameralistics in Basle, Riga, Dorpat, Karlsruhe and, finally, for 26 years in Giefien. Laspeyres, who held doctorates both in law and in economics, was the scion of a Huguenot family of originally Portuguese descent, which had settled in Berlin in the seventeenth century, which has confused pronunciation of his name to this day (see Rinne 1981, p. 196). He himself (probably) pronounced it as if it were German, which comes close to the Portuguese sound ‘Lass-pay-ress’ (see Meyers 1905, p. 209).