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I Changed My Name

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Re: I Changed My Name

#11

Post by declan_roberts »

zulux wrote: post #2

Pretty normal. My Chinese name is Chinese. Much less friction to pick a 21st-century English name in the anglosphere.

Very American actually. A significant amount of Americans have a surname that was changed or transliterated from another European language.

Re: I Changed My Name

#13

Post by nneonneo »

BoppreH wrote: post #3

I'm obliged to mention Falsehoods Programmer Believe About Names: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... . As someone who also has two family names, I always dread questions for my "last name". What's also fun are alphabet differences. Try to interact with the Greek government and they might ask you to spell your name using only their characters. An interesting challenge when your name contai…

A Russian friend living in Japan noted that, at least as of a decade ago, a decent number of government services (for citizens) allowed something like 6 characters max for the entire name. This is because Japanese names are normally written compactly in Kanji, but it becomes a problem when your name is 15 Katakana or 25 Latin characters long.

Re: I Changed My Name

#14

Post by dodecaphonic »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

A question for any Portuguese or Spanish speakers here, which I think are languages and cultures in which these sorts of name patterns are common - when you see a name like "Roberto Antonio Ferreira De Almeida", is it obvious where the "given" name stops, and the "family name" starts? I'm guessing in this case it's fairly obvious, since I'm guessing Ferreira is analogous to something like Smith, but are there names w…

Brazilian here. Around these parts, middle names are not a thing. They don’t show up in forms, and also aren’t expected to exist.

When the names before the family names are multiple, we call them “nomes compostos” (composed/combined names). There are very common combinations, such as “Carlos Eduardo” and “Maria Clara”.

If someone named “Maria Clara Guimarães Schindhelm” fills out a form, they’ll say their given name is “Maria Clara”, with the rest being the surname.

Knowing where the given name ends is an exercise in pattern recognition. We have a sense of what’s a given name, and a sense of what’s a surname. It’s an imperfect system, though: some families have surnames that are also used as first/given names (a common one is “Francisco”).

Re: I Changed My Name

#15

Post by masfuerte »

declan_roberts wrote: post #11
zulux wrote: post #2

Pretty normal. My Chinese name is Chinese. Much less friction to pick a 21st-century English name in the anglosphere.

Very American actually. A significant amount of Americans have a surname that was changed or transliterated from another European language.

e.g. President Drumpf.

Re: I Changed My Name

#16

Post by BoppreH »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

A question for any Portuguese or Spanish speakers here, which I think are languages and cultures in which these sorts of name patterns are common - when you see a name like "Roberto Antonio Ferreira De Almeida", is it obvious where the "given" name stops, and the "family name" starts? I'm guessing in this case it's fairly obvious, since I'm guessing Ferreira is analogous to something like Smith, but are there names w…

In my experience, every compound given name is made of very traditional names (with some specific combos like Roberto Antonio and Maria Eduarda being especially popular), so it has always been clear where the given name stops.

Though I wouldn't completely rule out a name being ambiguous, either because the family name is strangely casual, or because the parents made a bold choice.

Re: I Changed My Name

#19

Post by stavros »

BoppreH wrote: post #3

I'm obliged to mention Falsehoods Programmer Believe About Names: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... . As someone who also has two family names, I always dread questions for my "last name". What's also fun are alphabet differences. Try to interact with the Greek government and they might ask you to spell your name using only their characters. An interesting challenge when your name contai…

Eh you just replace those with the closest analog(s). "Sh" becomes "s", for example.

Re: I Changed My Name

#20

Post by DonaldPShimoda »

BoppreH wrote: post #3

I'm obliged to mention Falsehoods Programmer Believe About Names: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... . As someone who also has two family names, I always dread questions for my "last name". What's also fun are alphabet differences. Try to interact with the Greek government and they might ask you to spell your name using only their characters. An interesting challenge when your name contai…

Yeahhh currently considering going through the legal name-change process to move one of my family names to a middle name or something. It's made all the worse by the fact that my parents didn't always use both family names when I was growing up, so some legal documents disagree on what my "last name" is.
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