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I Changed My Name

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Re: I Changed My Name

#51
post #29
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I ask because usually hu is two sounds, so it would be transliterated as two letters. If you mean it used to be hü, then yes, you'd lose the umlauts in the transliteration, and it would just become "χου", with a hard h, not an aspirated one.

Re: I Changed My Name

#53
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…

>> 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 contains sounds that don't exist in the local language (sh, hu).

Seen from the other side, a friend of mine called Γωγώ (short for Γεωργία, i.e. Georgia) spelled her name "Roro" when she went to France. The standard transliteration would be "Gogo" but the French would pronounce that like "go-go", whereas they pronounce the "R/r" like Greeks pronounce the "Γ/γ".

And how about all the Greek women who take on their father's spelling of the family name in English-speaking languages (as have I)? E.g. Olympia Dukakis: that's a male form (Δουκάκης); the female is "Doukaki" (Δουκάκη). But, try to explain that to speakers of a language without grammatical genders. Sounds more like a spelling error.

I understand that Icelanding families have a similar problem, with surnames that name the parent, so that if the father's first name e.g. Bjorn, the son's surname would be Bjornsson and the daughter's name would be Bjornsdottir, with the father and mather's surname being whatever -son or -dottir reflects their ancestry. Can cause trouble when going through passport control as a family with underage kids all with different surnames.

Re: I Changed My Name

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah... "Constantin Constantinovitch Constantino... pushkin"?

Don't want to check it out online, just curious how well I can read Cyrillic as a native Greek speaker.

Re: I Changed My Name

#55
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…

> What's also fun are alphabet differences. Yeah. Slavic names are fun here. Polish names are already long due to their di- and tri-graphs, and transliterated Russian and Ukrainian names can easily eat up the "maximum character count" if you have a lot of sibilants in your name. And that's before you meet with someone who has to try and stumble over the various zh, sh and sch sounds.

That must be why the Czechs leave all their names' vowels at home when they travel abroad :P

Re: I Changed My Name

#56
post #46
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what happens when father's or mother's last name is already in FF FM form?

FF is your "first last name" and FM is your "second last name". FF is your father first last name (his FF). And FM is your mothers first last name (hers FF). The FF FM order was how it used to be (at least in Chile). Now, when the first kid of a given couple is born, that couple choose the order (FF FM or FM FF). In any case, is always the first last name of the parents, and the chosen order must be used for all kids…

Heh. Nice. Patrilineal multiple inheritance.

Re: I Changed My Name

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ah... "Constantin Constantinovitch Constantino... pushkin"? Don't want to check it out online, just curious how well I can read Cyrillic as a native Greek speaker.

"Constantinopolsky", it's "Constantinopol" plus "-sky" which is for forming adjectives, so essentially it means "Constantinopolean".

Re: I Changed My Name

#58

As problematic as national IDs and related things are are, I do someone wish my country would just assign me a universal identity number and let me use that for all government documents. Names are just too deeply personal to impose someone else's rules on them.

I think many people are scared of "being reduced to a number" but I wonder if, psychologically, codes like p7jn8-h would go over better.

Re: I Changed My Name

#59

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…

Brazilian here. Around these parts, middle names are not a thing. They don’t show up in forms, and also aren’t expected to exist. When the names before the family names are multiple, we call them “nomes compostos” (composed/combined names). There are very common combinations, such as “Carlos Eduardo” and “Maria Clara”. If someone named “Maria Clara Guimarães Schindhelm” fills out a form, they’ll say their given name…

> Around these parts, middle names are not a thing.

Not sure where you’re getting that from. Middle names are very much a thing in Brazil. You don’t often find forms with separate fields for middle names but middle names are ridiculously common nonetheless.

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