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I Changed My Name

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Re: I Changed My Name

#21

Post by Joker_vD »

nneonneo wrote: post #13
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.

"Константин Константинович Константинопольский" is a somewhat popular example of what one's design (graphical, computer system, whatever) should realistically allow for.

Re: I Changed My Name

#22

Post by nodja »

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…

Yes. Having 4 names are quite common in Portugal, specially in certain areas. The names are usually structured like this: G1 G2 FM FF

G1 and G2 are given names. Usually 2 "first names" that you see in english, but there's common combos and sometimes there's a word joining them. Examples: "Maria Jesus" vs "Maria de Jesus". Some names are more common to be put first, but almost every name can be put in any order, example: "José António" vs "António José".

FM and FF are easy. FF is the family name of your father (your father's FF), and FM is the family name from your mother (your mother's FF).

Where I was raised 99% of my friends had 4 names structured like this, I only knew a few that didn't. When I moved to Lisbon the 3 name structure was much more common, dropping the second given name.

In Portugal there's rules for naming your kids (at least there were when I lived there), but I think in Brazil such rules don't exist. The author is brazillian but his name seems to follow the traditional portuguese naming style, as you guessed his name in english could be translated to "Robert Anthony Smith of Almeida" (Almeida is a portuguese town).

Re: I Changed My Name

#23

Post by Jhsto »

I have this weird thing about a birthday -- for some reason, I was assigned a different birth date in NHS records in the UK compared to the one I have in my native Finland. I want to believe it has something to do with electronic systems transacting with different countries' systems (I noticed this difference soon after I exchanged my driver license) -- and I would have indeed born on a different day if it'd been the UK. But, I would assume this to be such a well-known issue with people who migrate, that it must just been just a typo. Doesn't stop me from believing though.

Re: I Changed My Name

#24

Post by wbobeirne »

nodja wrote: post #22
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…

Yes. Having 4 names are quite common in Portugal, specially in certain areas. The names are usually structured like this: G1 G2 FM FF G1 and G2 are given names. Usually 2 "first names" that you see in english, but there's common combos and sometimes there's a word joining them. Examples: "Maria Jesus" vs "Maria de Jesus". Some names are more common to be put first, but almost every name can be put in any order, examp…

Funny, when I saw "FM" and "FF" I interpreted it as "Family Male" and "Family Female." But Father and Mother are those characters gender swapped!

Re: I Changed My Name

#26

Post by BoppreH »

stavros wrote: post #19
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.

"Sh" to "s" is simple enough. Sounds horrible to my ears, but maybe not to someone named Stavros ;). I've also been told that the double-p of Boppre looks alien in Greek.

And the "hu" syllable (like the sound an owl makes) was a genuine challenge. I think we went with χού. And now that my name is in the system, that's forever with this spelling, I guess.

Re: I Changed My Name

#27

Post by stavros »

BoppreH wrote: post #26
stavros wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Sh" to "s" is simple enough. Sounds horrible to my ears, but maybe not to someone named Stavros ;). I've also been told that the double-p of Boppre looks alien in Greek. And the "hu" syllable (like the sound an owl makes) was a genuine challenge. I think we went with χού. And now that my name is in the system, that's forever with this spelling, I guess.

Yeah, it'd be χου. Which language is this from?

Re: I Changed My Name

#28

Post by netsharc »

Jhsto wrote: post #23

I have this weird thing about a birthday -- for some reason, I was assigned a different birth date in NHS records in the UK compared to the one I have in my native Finland. I want to believe it has something to do with electronic systems transacting with different countries' systems (I noticed this difference soon after I exchanged my driver license) -- and I would have indeed born on a different day if it'd been the…

Did they really take the time of birth into consideration? I suppose that could be an issue with poorly made electronic data exchange, passing along the time and timezone for a field which should be just for the date.

Re: I Changed My Name

#29

Post by BoppreH »

stavros wrote: post #27
BoppreH wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sh" to "s" is simple enough. Sounds horrible to my ears, but maybe not to someone named Stavros ;). I've also been told that the double-p of Boppre looks alien in Greek. And the "hu" syllable (like the sound an owl makes) was a genuine challenge. I think we went with χού. And now that my name is in the system, that's forever with this spelling, I guess.

Yeah, it'd be χου. Which language is this from?

It's just a syllable of the whole name, which is a German surname in a certain old dialect. And its pronunciation has been mangled after 150 in a country that can't pronounce it properly, so it's a mess all around.

Re: I Changed My Name

#30

Post by radarsat1 »

DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #20
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.

I can sympathize, the Spanish naming system makes things legitimately complicated sometimes. My wife has a Spanish style name Firstname(s) Fathername Mothername. But very very often she just goes by Firstname Fathername but it's not technically her legal name and is confusing in the non Spanish world because people assume otherwise that Mothername is her last name.

So for our son we decided to try to skip any confusion by doing what you are alluding to, and making her Fathername into his middle name, and giving him just my last name, in the English style.

And it worked, sort of, but then we discovered it was absolutely not legal to do that in my wife's country of origin. So kind of hilariously his registration in that country is: Firstname Mothername Fathername Mothername.

They forced us to repeat the middle name as part of his last name too. Just ridiculous. I thought at the least they would allow us to reverse them, but no.

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