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The government ate my name

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Re: The government ate my name

#151

Post by rkomorn »

Galanwe wrote: post #150

Not sure if that's of any comfort, but don't feel singled out: this naming issue happens _all the time_, in all countries, to everyone. I'm French, and had constant issues with naming and identification, whether I lived in western Europe, Eastern Europe, or Asia. - I have acute (é) accents in my first and last name. This seems to create different problems for each system my name is interacting with. Sometimes the let…

If it makes you feel any better; I have no middle name, and fairly short first and last (6 letters each).

My names have been consistently misspelled regardless.

Re: The government ate my name

#154

Post by stratocumulus0 »

int_19h wrote: post #123
ajxs wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My given name is Anthony, and I have this problem. I grew up in Australia, and visit some family in Poland every other year. The Australian pronunciation of my name is particularly incompatible with Polish, so I change it from 'ænθəni' to (something like) 'ɑːntɒni' . The 'æ' sound at the start of my name is totally foreign, and if I start introducing myself in Polish, then say my name the way an Australian would, the…

The sound [æ] is not entirely foreign to Polish and some other Slavic languages. It often shows up as an allophone of /a/ when it's between two "soft" (palatalized) consonants (e.g. the first /a/ in the word "niania"). The problem for us learning it is that it's not a separate phoneme, and worse yet, the environment in which it occurs in Slavic languages doesn't correspond to anything in English - and, conversely, in…

This doesn't happen in my speech, I certainly pronounce both 's as [a] in "niania". [ɛ] is different, it certainly becomes [e] after palatalized consonants. I agree that people cannot tell the difference intuitively, though.

Re: The government ate my name

#155

Post by amanaplanacanal »

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.

In the US, I'm not sure there are any laws about what you can be named. I'm not a lawyer though.

Re: The government ate my name

#156

Post by eythian »

mcv wrote: post #146

The American presumption of having a single middle initial has always seemed weird to me. In NL, you can have as many names as you want, and some have a lot. Others have just a first and last name. I happen to have that single middle initial, but my wife and kids have two. Also, my wife's first name is not actually any of her legal names. Same with my dad and his brother and sister. "Calling name" is a common field o…

In NZ someone I know has a single name. Due to the constraints of the system, effectively he has no first name and only a surname. In things where a first and last name are required (I think the drivers licence system needed it), he uses "citizen" as a filler.

It can go the other extreme too of course: https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360848808/worlds-longest-nam...

Re: The government ate my name

#157

Post by eythian »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #38

My impression by living in NZ for a while now that I can call myself anything I want. I've been asked to verify my identity only when setting up bank account, sorting out visa/tax with my sponsoring employer. After that it's only when leaving/entering country. For my own convenience I use an english name to save barista butchering my name and feeling bad about it. Naming kids was an exercise in linguistics. In Lithua…

In NZ there are restrictions on what you can't name a child (titles that represent royalty e.g. "king" or certain positions, e.g. "justice", or ones that can lead to excessive mockery, e.g. "sex fruit"), but the line seems to be hazy as "Number 16 Bus Shelter" was apparently permitted.

As for legally renaming yourself, I really don't know if the same rules apply. Probably the title-related ones, or ones that could be offensive, but I'd expect that's about it.

But just getting called whatever you like isn't a problem. I know quite a few people who don't go by their legal first name.

Re: The government ate my name

#158

Post by ricudis »

cortesoft wrote: post #118
makeitdouble wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did you ever travel internationally along with only one of your parents? I know of many cases around the world where authorities will definitely cause you some trouble if you try to do that, even more if somehow "expected" naming conventions don't match up. At least that's how it's been in the last 2 decades.

Re: The government ate my name

#159

Post by ricudis »

ViscountPenguin wrote: post #140
cortesoft wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I am curious to hear an example, because I am struggling to imagine when this would be something they would try to find you by your kids last name.

For me, it's mostly been in medical settings. I've had particular trouble with public health programs automatically signing me up under my child's last name. I don't know if my local healthcare catchment just has their software setup wrong, but it's a continual annoyance.

Even the assumption that people have (something that can be used as) a last name is incorrect.

Currently I'm living in Indonesia, where a surprisingly large number of people have just one name (plus, when they have many, they're more often than not completely arbitrary).

This was very common practice up to the '90s. If you have a single name, they duplicate it in your passport, and you end up like "Soekarno Soekarno". Which STILL raises eyebrows in several western countries' ignorant airline employees (and sometime even immigration officers, though they're admittedly more well educated about such issues).

Nowadays they proactively give at least two names to their children to match the western(-ized) system assumptions.

Re: The government ate my name

#160

Post by ricudis »

int_19h wrote: post #120
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?)

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 som…

Geez, you left yourselves behind. We Greeks at some point decided that 3 /i/'s are just not enough for us, so we invented some diphthongs (ει, οι) also pronounced /i/ :D
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