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Abe’s New Word Order

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Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#11

Post by roenxi »

gumby wrote: post #5
ginko wrote: post #3

Isn't this essentially telling other languages how they're supposed to work?

Well it's liker the German government saying that they will always write München even in English; that doesn't say anything about how English speakers (or German private citizens speaking English) might choose to refer to Munich. In Malaysia "Datuk" is used as a combined honorific with a name when speaking otherwise completely idiomatic English rather than being translated into "Sir So-and-so" It's not really differe…

> Well it's liker the German government saying that they will always write München even in English; that doesn't say anything about how English speakers (or German private citizens speaking English) might choose to refer to Munich.

I suppose this sort of thing instantly confuses me - why aren't we already calling the city München if that is what the Germans are doing?

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#12

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

There's going to be a lot more Wikipedia articles with the explanatory note “In this Japanese name, the family name is [surname].”

If this catches on, maybe there will be three eras of Japanese name order in English. Pre-Meiji, Post-Meiji, Post-Reiwa.

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#13

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

roenxi wrote: post #11
gumby wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's liker the German government saying that they will always write München even in English; that doesn't say anything about how English speakers (or German private citizens speaking English) might choose to refer to Munich. In Malaysia "Datuk" is used as a combined honorific with a name when speaking otherwise completely idiomatic English rather than being translated into "Sir So-and-so" It's not really differe…

> Well it's liker the German government saying that they will always write München even in English; that doesn't say anything about how English speakers (or German private citizens speaking English) might choose to refer to Munich. I suppose this sort of thing instantly confuses me - why aren't we already calling the city München if that is what the Germans are doing?

From Wikipedia:

The name of the city is derived from the Old/Middle High German term Munichen, meaning "by the monks".

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#14

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

roenxi wrote: post #11
gumby wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's liker the German government saying that they will always write München even in English; that doesn't say anything about how English speakers (or German private citizens speaking English) might choose to refer to Munich. In Malaysia "Datuk" is used as a combined honorific with a name when speaking otherwise completely idiomatic English rather than being translated into "Sir So-and-so" It's not really differe…

> Well it's liker the German government saying that they will always write München even in English; that doesn't say anything about how English speakers (or German private citizens speaking English) might choose to refer to Munich. I suppose this sort of thing instantly confuses me - why aren't we already calling the city München if that is what the Germans are doing?

For the same reason German speakers say Wasser but English speakers say water. Words diverge over time.

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#15

Post by frabert »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #13
roenxi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well it's liker the German government saying that they will always write München even in English; that doesn't say anything about how English speakers (or German private citizens speaking English) might choose to refer to Munich. I suppose this sort of thing instantly confuses me - why aren't we already calling the city München if that is what the Germans are doing?

From Wikipedia: The name of the city is derived from the Old/Middle High German term Munichen, meaning "by the monks".

The Italian name for München/Munich is Monaco (literally "monk"), which makes a lot of sense now :)

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#16

Post by loriverkutya »

When you are Hungarian, Japanese names gets really really complicated if you want to figure out, which one is the surname:

"In Hungarian, the Eastern order of Japanese names is officially kept and Hungarian transliteration is used (e.g. Mijazaki Hajao), but Western name order is also sometimes used with English transliteration (e.g. Hayao Miyazaki)." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_name#Name_order

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#17

Post by stoicShell »

As a programmer and nerd with an aesthetic sense for consistency, I move that we all adopt an array of PascalCase strings as value for the "name" key.

    {"name": ["JohnSmith", "JohnEdwardSmith", "JohnESmith"]}
    {"name": ["AnneGauthier"]}
    {"name": ["ZoolisCartom", "CartomZolis"]}
Owner decides the array's content; others (people and systems) may then just 'match' based on reqs/prefs.

____

More on-topic, from a linguistic standpoint I believe natives should always define their own namespace, others should merely conform (e.g. use as-literal-as-possible transliteration following accepted standards).

A foreign name is an invitation to meet another culture.

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#18

Post by kstenerud »

stoicShell wrote: post #17

As a programmer and nerd with an aesthetic sense for consistency, I move that we all adopt an array of PascalCase strings as value for the "name" key. {"name": ["JohnSmith", "JohnEdwardSmith", "JohnESmith"]} {"name": ["AnneGauthier"]} {"name": ["ZoolisCartom", "CartomZolis"]} Owner decides the array's content; others (people and systems) may then just 'match' based on reqs/prefs. ____ More on-topic, from a linguistic…

How would you handle situations where the name naturally contains capitalized letters in the middle? Or names in scripts that have no capitalization? Or required punctuation?

Never build a system that leverages an existing system not designed for the same level of constraints and use cases. Golang made that mistake and it's turning into a big mess.

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#19

Post by stoicShell »

kstenerud wrote: post #18
stoicShell wrote: post #17

As a programmer and nerd with an aesthetic sense for consistency, I move that we all adopt an array of PascalCase strings as value for the "name" key. {"name": ["JohnSmith", "JohnEdwardSmith", "JohnESmith"]} {"name": ["AnneGauthier"]} {"name": ["ZoolisCartom", "CartomZolis"]} Owner decides the array's content; others (people and systems) may then just 'match' based on reqs/prefs. ____ More on-topic, from a linguistic…

How would you handle situations where the name naturally contains capitalized letters in the middle? Or names in scripts that have no capitalization? Or required punctuation? Never build a system that leverages an existing system not designed for the same level of constraints and use cases. Golang made that mistake and it's turning into a big mess.

Sorry, I edited the post with more examples. Capitalized letters names in the middle, e.g. "JohnESmith" for "John E. Smith"?

Note that owners would choose their array, i.e. how they wish to normalize their own name(s). In most countries it would probably be issued by the State, though.

But hey that's a joke, a thought experiment at best; I think strings with spaces are perfectly fine. The concept of a defining single string for a name (implying order is fixed, forever) is however good. In practice it's already what most contacts apps let you do — input first, last, middle, handle, etc. and define order to display, but it's generally a global setting; it could be granular (per contact), with quick/helper rules per nationality for instance.

I'm not sure we'll ever solve this linguistic and cultural matter only using technology though. ;-)

Edit (final, promise): I simply move that:

- people choose what are "valid" representations of their name (owner decides, others conform)

- systems make it easy for others (people, systems) to pick one (by default you'd assume item 0 in the array).

Re: Abe’s New Word Order

#20

Post by kstenerud »

stoicShell wrote: post #19
kstenerud wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you handle situations where the name naturally contains capitalized letters in the middle? Or names in scripts that have no capitalization? Or required punctuation? Never build a system that leverages an existing system not designed for the same level of constraints and use cases. Golang made that mistake and it's turning into a big mess.

Sorry, I edited the post with more examples. Capitalized letters names in the middle, e.g. "JohnESmith" for "John E. Smith"? Note that owners would choose their array, i.e. how they wish to normalize their own name(s). In most countries it would probably be issued by the State, though. But hey that's a joke, a thought experiment at best; I think strings with spaces are perfectly fine. The concept of a defining single…

Unfortunately, it exemplifies the USA-centric approach to names: First, Middle, Last. All with the first letter capitalized and the rest lowercase.

But that's not how things work in more than half the world. Just taking the capitalization issue: Even the French name DuPont will break your example. Non-latin scripts generally don't have capitalization, and even European ones have letters that can't be capitalized (for example ß). So using capitalization as a field separator simply doesn't work, because it was never designed for that purpose in the real world.

And people keep writing these simplistic systems because nothing breaks so long as all of their users are homogeneous. Except that the system they are building upon doesn't have the same implicit constraints as they've set up. And then things go very, very wrong in production.

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