`Linguistically, when it comes to words of foreign origin, the English, as the world's worst linguists, do most things wrongly. You know that in Portuguese it should be Gama. I now know that in Portuguese it should be Gama. However, the rest of the native English speakers don't know it should be Gama. The English (rightly or wrongly) always precede the surname with a  ``da`` ``de`` or ``der`` when there is one. There is no reason why on English Wikipedia that there should be an exception to this common usage solely for Vasco da Gama. Why should he be any different ?    `