71–80 of 174 posts
> A man named Ferrari might not be a blacksmith. It was right in front of me and I feel dumb, having never considered it might have the same latin root as the word ferrous. https://www.thoughtco.com/ferrari-last-name-meaning-and-orig...
I worked in insurance for over five years. One of the more common reasons we had to send out HIPAA notification letters was due to relatives in the same city with similar or identical names getting claims processed under the wrong policy. These were very often two male relatives -- father and son, twin brothers, cousins. They sometimes even lived on the same street. There's also this story about two women with the sa…
Here in Italy we are given a Codice Fiscale at birth, which is a string of 13 characters derived by 3 letters of the last name, 3 letters of the first name (usually these 6 letters are all consonants, but there are exceptions for names like Anna), 2 digits, a letter and two other digits representing the birth day, one letter and the digits representing the birthplace an one last letter which is a checksum. These are…
But the number is not enough to buy anything or open a bank account. For that you need the physical id card that is as hard as forge as passports.
A very good system to make contracts, paying taxes, school registration, etc easy without allowing false impersonation.
I wonder what the expression "one whose name must not be spoken" really is about. Why are there such things or people, or are there? Recently I've noticed a name which must not be pronounced in vain is "Alexa". If you talk about her she always interrupts with a lengthy diatribe. It has lead to a situation in my family where we speak like "Why don't you ask "you know who" to play that song for you?"
Dunno about material beings, but hiccups are believed in some places to be caused by someone remembering you.
I wonder what the expression "one whose name must not be spoken" really is about. Why are there such things or people, or are there? Recently I've noticed a name which must not be pronounced in vain is "Alexa". If you talk about her she always interrupts with a lengthy diatribe. It has lead to a situation in my family where we speak like "Why don't you ask "you know who" to play that song for you?"
In Italy it’s quite common to go with Galileo Galilei, I would say we use name surname most of the time when we mention him. Maybe it has to do also with how it rolls out of the tongue nicely for us.
In German I think we also use Galilei more then Galileo.
The US English dictionary in Firefox knows about Galileo but doesn't recognize Galilei. When I switch to German it is the opposite: Galilei recognized but Gelileo unknown. This kind of supports your point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This really shouldn't be a problem in the modern age when each person can be assigned a globally (or at least nationally) unique ID number as soon as their birth certificate is produced. It baffles me that the most technologically advanced country in the world still has difficulties figuring out who has the right to vote.
A lot of people in the US just don't like the idea of a central national database that stores information about them. To be sure, this (increasingly) happens at some level anyway. And to a lot of people in, say, Europe this probably seems like a baffling concern. But it's the way it is.
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There was a stand up comedian of Algerian descent explaining that situation when the French administration tries to do the census of their colony. The custom was to use your father's and grandfather's name as a name. Problem is, many people, including brothers would have the most popular name (I think it was Mohammed). Having a Mohammed, son of Mohammed, grandson of Mohammed was common. So the French admninistration…
Atatürk (the founder of the Turkish Republic) made surnames mandatory as a reform to be compatible with Europe (he was very pro-Europe) and this was in 1934. Everyone got to pick their own surnames. Luckily people hesitated to pick Mohammed because the word for last name in Turkish translates to "name of lineage" and that'd be a big claim (also I've heard that it wasn't allowed not to put a target on non-muslims' bac…
In Italy it’s quite common to go with Galileo Galilei, I would say we use name surname most of the time when we mention him. Maybe it has to do also with how it rolls out of the tongue nicely for us.
In German I think we also use Galilei more then Galileo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or having to give your « middle name » in the Anglosphere ! Try explaining you have three to a clerk...
Is it harder than just saying "I have three middle names"? It's not exactly a foreign concept; it is normal for white Americans to have more than one, though not especially common.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people in the US just don't like the idea of a central national database that stores information about them. To be sure, this (increasingly) happens at some level anyway. And to a lot of people in, say, Europe this probably seems like a baffling concern. But it's the way it is.
There doesn't even need to be a central database of every citizen. Distributed generation of unique identifiers is a more or less solved problem.