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The government ate my name

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Re: The government ate my name

#171

Post by tliltocatl »

xg15 wrote: post #20
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…

This sounds as if it could slowly erode the whole "gendered surname" concept even in the origin countries (e.g. Russia) If you can treat the gendered name simply as a grammatical construct, things are easy - and a "name" like "Elena Kuznetsov" would simply be a grammatical error and never occur as a real name. However, now people from abroad visit the country or possibly even (re-)immigrate and suddenly you do have r…

As everyone said already, the gendering isn't something just cultural, it's baked into the grammar. Specially because of grammatical case, different genders have different inflections. In a setting like "Let's call Kuznetsov(a)" accusative case applies, so Kuznezov would become Kuznetsova, Kuznetsova would become Kuznetsovu. Gender-neutral speech is absolutely impossible without overhauling the whole grammar, not just pronouns like in English. And yes, to a unaccustomed Russian ear applying third-person plural "they" to as indefinite-gendered singular sounds weird - and singular neutral "it" is just degrading, as I think it is in English.

Re: The government ate my name

#172

Post by MisterTea »

School-Cotton wrote: post #136
int_19h wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In DOS days, codepage 437 was commonly referred to as "ASCII" colloquially in countries where some other encoding was in use for the national script.

Interesting to know, thanks!

Yup, what the GP said. It was a common mistake for people to assume ASCII included CP 437 characters back in the DOS days. Even I made that assumption when I was a kid.

Re: The government ate my name

#173

Post by rkomorn »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #166
rkomorn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets me is the people who decide not to call me by the name I specifically introduce myself with. I have a nasal vowel in my name that, so far in my life, only French and Portuguese speakers have pronounced properly. I learned English in the US young enough that no one guesses I'm not native, and I anglicized my name so that it could be pronounced easily. It is what I go by. I introduce myself with this adopted…

Yeah. Every time someone asks me, "but how do you really pronounce it", I do a big internal sigh and resign myself to the next 10 minutes being a useless pronunciation lesson.

And when they somehow come away satisfied that their wrong pronunciation works... ugh.

I will say though, I'm perfectly fine with people not being able to pronounce my name, and I do expect the same courtesy in return. I'll give it my best shot, but if it's not happening, it's just not happening.

Re: The government ate my name

#174

Post by 6510 »

I know a guy with just one name. He puts it in both the first and second name field.

I vaguely remember a story of a family migrating though different writing systems all ending up with different names.

Re: The government ate my name

#175

Post by pavel_lishin »

rkomorn wrote: post #173
pavel_lishin wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Every time someone asks me, "but how do you really pronounce it", I do a big internal sigh and resign myself to the next 10 minutes being a useless pronunciation lesson.

And when they somehow come away satisfied that their wrong pronunciation works... ugh. I will say though, I'm perfectly fine with people not being able to pronounce my name, and I do expect the same courtesy in return. I'll give it my best shot, but if it's not happening, it's just not happening.

> And when they somehow come away satisfied that their wrong pronunciation works... ugh.

Whatever the outcome, I'm just pleased that that particular conversation has come to an end.

Re: The government ate my name

#176

Post by hiatus »

feoren wrote: post #82
hiatus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

People's own opinions about what their name is is not a "non-issue", shitty-ass governments or not. Declaring a people's opinions about names stupid and irrelevant (or even illegal) is one of the many ways majorities oppress or even commit slow genocide against minorities.

> Declaring a people's opinions about names stupid and irrelevant (or even illegal) is one of the many ways majorities oppress or even commit slow genocide against minorities.

My point was governments do this all the time and it is a far cry from fascism. Elsewhere in the thread, it is mentioned that often times you have to compromise when registering a name in a different country (for instance, if the language does not contain a phoneme used in your name). In that case, you have to conform to the country's culture and language. Under that lens, banning names that violate cultural norms is not so crazy.

Re: The government ate my name

#177

Post by hiatus »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #170
hiatus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You sure can! But that doesn't mean it won't cause you problems. For example, if you're male, and decide to change your name to Sarah, you totally can - but don't be surprised when people assume you're a woman. And there are many countries, of which you are unaware, that do have pretty strict laws about what you are and aren't allowed to name your children. Iceland is the one that springs to mind off the top of my he…

I think you misread my comment? I said:

> You can't, in any country I'm aware of, choose absolutely any name you want.

Like in Germany can you name your kid "The Holocaust Didn't Happen"? No right?

Re: The government ate my name

#178

Post by hiatus »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #155
hiatus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't think you can name your kid $()*&@Q%&

Re: The government ate my name

#179

Post by BonoboIO »

wheybags wrote: post #92
dale_glass wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sometimes also causes problems for the authorities themselves for a change. I recall some TV program long ago mentioning the police had trouble with Russians because sometimes they think there's a whole gang and it's really just one guy whose name got corrupted in 5 different ways. Depending on the Russian name and the local language there can be many ways to screw things up. Like Elena might get written down as…

There was a hilarious one in Ireland where we were desperatly searching for a prolific polish criminal named "Prawo Jazdy". Which means... driving license. https://www.joe.ie/news/garda-spent-two-years-searching-for-...

Same in Germany, the „guy“ was wanted for hundreds of offenses

Re: The government ate my name

#180

Post by ricudis »

watwut wrote: post #27
xg15 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds as if it could slowly erode the whole "gendered surname" concept even in the origin countries (e.g. Russia) If you can treat the gendered name simply as a grammatical construct, things are easy - and a "name" like "Elena Kuznetsov" would simply be a grammatical error and never occur as a real name. However, now people from abroad visit the country or possibly even (re-)immigrate and suddenly you do have r…

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.

Most (though not all) Greek surnames are also gendered. The common practice is to inherit your fathers surname, changing the gender if you're born female. For example, a quite common surname is Papadopoulos (masculine) / Papadopoulou (feminine). It was usually chopped into "Pappas" when Greek immigrants to US were passing through Ellis Island.

Till the '90s at least there was an unofficial convention of anglicizing our surnames using the masculine form, ending up with things like Eleni (Helen) Papadopoulos, which in Greek sounds like a grammatical monstrosity.

Other surnames were commonly mangled in weird ways - Nicholas Metropolis (of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm) surname was Μητρόπουλος (Mitropoulos). Metropolis is quite near phonetically but grammatically makes no sense in Greek.

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