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The government ate my name

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Re: The government ate my name

#111

Post by chrismorgan »

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #46
bombcar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you go with the phonetic option, or do you just use the Cyrillic for the name of the writer of the Gospel? (It's a more general question, too, is John Juan when he's in Mexico?)

> is John Juan when he's in Mexico? For the biblical Jesus, the situation is even worse. His name was probably originally יֵשׁוּעַ, and should therefore have been Yeshua to us users of the modern day Latin alphabet. But instead his name was adapted to Greek linguistic conventions as Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoûs), and from there transliterated into Jesus.

James/Jacob is even messier! They come from the same name, but are in English treated as completely distinct names. In the New Testament Greek, you get Ἰακώβ (iakob) used for Old-Testament-era Jacobs (primarily the one later given the name Israel, but also the one in Matthew 1:15–16), and Ἰάκωβος (iakobus) used for New-Testament-era Jameses (two of Jesus’ disciples, and one of his brothers). English Bibles have ended up using Jacob for the old and James for the new ones, but not all languages maintain the distinction: in Telugu, for example, they’re all యాకోబు (yakobu).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_(given_name)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_(name)

Re: The government ate my name

#112

Post by Nio1024 »

Interesting read — and honestly, this isn’t unique to the U.S. or Mexico. Bureaucratic inefficiency and siloed systems seem to be universal in government operations. What’s missing isn’t just “digitization,” but true digital transformation — interoperable systems, shared data standards, and accountability built into the process.With AI advancing so fast, I wonder if we’ll see tools or frameworks that can actually help governments move past legacy workflows instead of just automating the same inefficiencies.

Re: The government ate my name

#113

Post by ViscountPenguin »

cortesoft wrote: post #59
pavel_lishin wrote: post #7

There's an analogous problem for Russians, and presumably folks from other Slavic-language countries. Our last names are gendered; if Ivan Kuznetsov marries Elena, her last name becomes Kuznetsova. (And their children would have gendered last names, too - little Borya Kuznetsov and little Masha Kuznetsova.) So Russian families who move to America have a choice - either deal with people and systems who assume that mar…

> who assume that married couples, and parents/children all have the same last name and hit roadblocks when that expectation does not match reality Speaking as someone whose mom didn't change their name when marrying my dad, with a sister who didn't change her name when marrying my brother in law, with a wife who also didn't change her name when she married me, I think this problem is overblown. I have yet to encount…

As someone who has a different last name to my child, I constantly encounter really weird issues where people assume that I don't exist since "First name, Childs last name" doesn't exist in the database.

Re: The government ate my name

#114

Post by ZPrimed »

hiatus wrote: post #65
watwut wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gendered name is grammatical construct, literally. But the strong "Elena Kuznetsov" cant exist rules are bad idea, because a.) foreigners exist b.) minorities exists c.) people with strong opinions over how they want to be named exist. They can exist, but sound weird in the language.

> people with strong opinions over how they want to be named exist. is a total non-issue. You can't, in any country I'm aware of, choose absolutely any name you want.

I had a former coworker who had just (legally) changed his entire name in order to fully separate himself from his family when he started with the company. (This was in the US.) It made the onboarding kind of weird, because he originally gave us one name but then when he started had an entirely different one.

Re: The government ate my name

#115

Post by ZPrimed »

angarg12 wrote: post #64

I'm hispanic and my two last names are Garcia Garcia. That is two last names that just happen to be the same. When I moved to the US I could have dropped one or hyphenate them. I decided to keep it as-is, and use "Garcia Garcia" as my last name (space and all). Besides confusing amongs americans and people always confusing one Garcia for middle name and one for last name, I had almost no problems. One time an airline…

If I saw your name in a CRM system, as a USican, I would assume that some dumbass on my team accidentally pasted your last name into the field twice.

Re: The government ate my name

#116

Post by makeitdouble »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #109
makeitdouble wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at it from the other way, your mom probably didn't change her name because it's not a big deal where you live ? People getting the issues live in different systems and/or have different needs, and it also changes with our world getting more digital. One part that doesn't much depend on locality this days would be international travel and money. For international travel, small kids having a different name is s…

I can’t fathom this being an issue in 2025 where you can have digitized versions of your kid’s birth certificate on your phone, which indicate that you are their parent. The kidnapping thing has nothing to do with names, if you only have one parent every country has their rules and you should check them out ahead of time.

We did it with every kid/parent and name combination. The only time we where ever asked to show papers was when the names didn't match. It shouldn't be that way, but IME it's a factor.

As you point out, being the parent doesn't really matter in that case, it needs to be proven that both parent agree on the kid leaving the country.

Re: The government ate my name

#117

Post by cortesoft »

makeitdouble wrote: post #79
cortesoft wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who assume that married couples, and parents/children all have the same last name and hit roadblocks when that expectation does not match reality Speaking as someone whose mom didn't change their name when marrying my dad, with a sister who didn't change her name when marrying my brother in law, with a wife who also didn't change her name when she married me, I think this problem is overblown. I have yet to encount…

Looking at it from the other way, your mom probably didn't change her name because it's not a big deal where you live ? People getting the issues live in different systems and/or have different needs, and it also changes with our world getting more digital. One part that doesn't much depend on locality this days would be international travel and money. For international travel, small kids having a different name is s…

My mom got married in the 70s in the US. It wasn't a huge issue, but people did think she was strange.

I never experienced any of what you say as a child. We travelled internationally a number of times, never had anyone tell us she wasn't my mom or anything.

I am not sure what you mean about the money thing. My mom was on my accounts when I was a kid (with different last names) so she could send me money. As an adult, I can't see how sending money would be an issue. My mom and I transfer money to each other fairly often still ($70k recently, went through fine).

I did not stay in my home town. Not sure how they would be relevant.

Again, most people would assume (if they assumed anything) that my parents were divorced, which is incredibly common. Half my friends had different last names from their siblings and/or parent. Blended families are incredibly common.

I am now a dad of two. They have my last name, while my wife (their mom) has a different name. Again, never a problem at doctors or school or anything. They always make you fill out your full name and relationship. Again, super common to have different last names here im California.

Re: The government ate my name

#118

Post by cortesoft »

makeitdouble wrote: post #97
fluidcruft wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the comment they replied to specifically mentioned moving to America. I cannot fathom this being an actual issue in the USA.

To your point(and parent's), it won't be if you're never getting out of the USA nor deal with the rest of the world. But most people moving in don't cut all ties with their home country nor never touch their passport again I think.

We travelled internationally as a family when I was a kid. No one ever mentioned our names being different.

Again, a huge percentage of the population has divorced parents, plus all the kids born out of wedlock. That is like half the population that already don’t have the same last name as at least one of their parents. Everyone who deals with the population is going to encounter this situation every day. They aren’t going to be surprised or confused by a kid with a different name as their parent.

Re: The government ate my name

#119

Post by cortesoft »

aftbit wrote: post #93
cortesoft wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who assume that married couples, and parents/children all have the same last name and hit roadblocks when that expectation does not match reality Speaking as someone whose mom didn't change their name when marrying my dad, with a sister who didn't change her name when marrying my brother in law, with a wife who also didn't change her name when she married me, I think this problem is overblown. I have yet to encount…

I have heard that others have had problems with picking up children from school and with visiting their partners in the hospital. The one and only time my wife has had an issue was at a car rental company (at SFO of all places), where they insisted that she couldn't be a co-driver because we must not be married, and only married couples or employees could be co-drivers (without an additional fee). I was eventually ab…

That’s crazy with the car rental, I wonder if that was just a rogue employee.

As for picking up kids, every place I take my kids to (school, camps, daycare, etc) require you to specifically list who is allowed to pick up their kid, no matter what their last name is. Even if you have the same last name, they aren’t going to hand the kid over unless you are on the list.

It would be crazy to let anyone pick up any kid with the same last name. Think about all the Garcias and Smiths and Kims in the world… they could pick up so many kids! Plus, most kidnappings are done by family members; any institution who hands over a kid just because the name is the same is going to open themselves up to so much liability.

Re: The government ate my name

#120

Post by int_19h »

bombcar wrote: post #33
pavel_lishin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm trying to figure out how one would write out Matthew in Cyrillic, which has two phonemes that are as much of a nightmare for Russian-speakers as "ы" and "р" are for English-speakers. "Мэтью", maybe?

Do you go with the phonetic option, or do you just use the Cyrillic for the name of the writer of the Gospel? (It's a more general question, too, is John Juan when he's in Mexico?)

Russian names for most Biblical figures, early saints etc all derive from Byzantian Greek versions of the same, usually transcribed more or less phonetically to what was the closest pronunciation in Old Slavic language at the time.

Although it's not quite that simple because the original version of Cyrillic actually has a bunch of extraneous letters that are there solely to represent the distinctions in Greek; in some cases, distinctions that were themselves historical in Greek by that time even. For example, three letters for /i/: I (corresponding to iota), И (corresponding to eta), and Ѵ (corresponding to upsilon), all of which were already pronounced the same in contemporary Greek, and this carried over to Slavic languages as well.

In other cases the distinction became nativized though. E.g. Greek theta, already pronounced as /θ/ in Greek, became the Cyrillic Ѳ - but the closest they could get to pronounce it was [f], and so it came to have the same meaning as Ф, and eventually Ѳ was just dropped as unneeded. Thus e.g. transliteration of Matthew is Матфей, and a bunch of other words where most European languages have "t" or "th" sounds have "ф" in East Slavic languages: e.g. "arithmetic" is "арифметика". But then some words were borrowed into Russian from Latin as well, or from other languages that borrowed them via Latin, and so sometimes theta became /t/: "mathematics" - "математика".

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