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beccaelizabethI read a thing on falsehoods programmers believe about names, linked to from a thing by ![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png)
denise on "Real Name" policies, which mentioned anonymity, pseudonymity, and the use of self-chosen names (I've seen some people moving to call that state "autonymity", which I like a lot). I looked up autonym and it's a word that means the same as endonym. An autonym "is a name used by a group or category of people to refer to themselves or their language, as opposed to a name given to them by other groups. For example, Deutsche is the autonym of a people known in English as Germans." The opposite is exonym, a name given by outsiders or from a different language.
New words :-)
Things I have learned about names this year simply from trying to name my future people so it looks like the whole world went: so many systems ZOMG.
English has First, Middle, Last names, with the Last being a family name that is inherited, and the other two being chosen pretty randomly from baby names books. Except, of course, when they aren't. Also, English uses this here Latin alphabet, with none of them fancy accents, except when it feels like it. And English names don't have punctuation, except in O'Neill and Harkness-Jones and similar.
... English is a language built mostly of exceptions. This irritates me on a regular basis.
Naming systems from other languages do all kinds of EVERYthing.
Quite a lot of them have some kind of family name, inherited. They don't keep it at the end, except when they do. Lots of newspapers I read to hunt out names goes something like Jack O'NEILL so you know which is the family name whatever order they put them in. If I do that in my book I don't know if it will go invisible or if I will be SHOUTING whenever I INTRODUCE someone. Plus half the room will be talking about PARK and Trice will mention Malcolm and, hmmm, that emphasises the difference rather a lot. It also makes it look like FAMILY NAME is the BIG IMPORTANT ONE. Since my imaginary people have it written on their uniform pocket - and I should really get around to mentioning that at some point soon, it's just it's so obvious to everyone they'd never stop and think it, hang on it's not obvious to the metal dude, okay, he'll ask why everyone feels the need to be labelled or something. ANYway... it makes the family name look IMPORTANT. Is it important?
A lot of Asia has the same name. No, really, a lot. More than that. More than that. You can put the names on a pie chart and have not so many slices of pie. Korean names have 45% of people called Kim, Lee or Park. (For comparison, a quick google reckons Smith in the UK is something like 1.22%). If people are referring to Malcolm as Park and thinking it's a unique identifier we can pretty much figure the ship is not Korean or majority Korean staffed. Also wiki has some stuff about formal and rude ways of addressing Korean people and just using their surname would be in the rude pile, so this isn't a ship with Korean naming or mode of address customs.
There's also the Ro Laren thing, though if we get as far as NCC1701-D and humans in general are making assumptions about which one of those is a family name, that's really depressing, cause right now the family-last is seriously not the default. And what kind of personnel file wouldn't include which is the family name or proper form of address? That's just peculiar.
... though one of my characters is currently stuck with a false assumption about Captain Saisei Iteza, but he's only been introduced to her like that, spoken words, three in a row. Calling her Captain Saisei is a plausible guess he could expect to be corrected on. He has not taken into account that you don't necessarily correct explosives on minor points of protocol.
A lot of my ship has the same first name. A new technology lead to a new custom. But then it mixes with the old customs, and people are left trying to differentiate themselves when they're all called Rene. Only using last names, when they've retained levels of formality associated with first/last names, is a limiting possibility. Developing a bazillion nicknames for people called Rene is another. Also, since knowing someone is Rene means knowing something important about them, giving your first name would be a Thing.
I'd like to know more about how revealing names are in societies with a strong caste system. They can be bad enough around here with the class connotations. Is interesting.
Not everywhere feels the need to use a family name. And some places use it, but not in the form of heritable single word, they just list all the family ever.
Arabic names have quite a lot more components than I'm used to. Kunya, ism, nasab, laqab, nisbah. And there's more grammar in them, like 'servant of' and 'the' and 'son of' and 'father of'. I'm reasonably certain I couldn't make one up well enough to name a character, which is kind of sad and reveals mass areas of my ignorance. The room for error in trying to understand them as British pattern names is massive. Even without getting into pronunciation and the tendency of some listeners to give up before you're out of syllables. (The tendency of nicknames and use names to have one, maybe two syllables is just odd, considering how much language that rules out.) It's probably why Alexander Siddig is not Siddig El Fadil now, people asking how to say it, and DVD covers don't generally have names like his long form name on them.
... now I'm wondering if Arabic DVDs do or if they have short poster names...
... I can't distinguish squiggles enough to have a chance of figuring that one out by looking.
Squiggles, otherwise known as writing systems, are another name Thing. It's not just that we have so many alphabets and symbol systems, it's that collapsing them destroys data. And that there's no single agreed upon method for doing so. From anything to anything.
Since I can only type in English with no accents (unless the computer decides something needs an accent, which my auto-correct sometimes does when I'm not looking) my character naming possibilities are limited.
And anything I do to the name systems, any clues I try to include like a very international name set being slotted in to a First&Last=Family paradigm or addressing someone as Park, they're going to go invisible even if I put lots of work in. Local normal is going to be assumed over the top of them. Which is partly because I'm not good enough at other sets to build on their normal, and partly because I'm building a British descended future to play with ideas of Us and Them, so it looks like British normal and that will look like I haven't thought about it. I did, I just... kept it anyway.
The thing that bugs me is discussions about 'weird names'. Dear internets: whatever your name is, your name is weird. You just have to change countries, continents, sometimes even counties, and your name is weird. So what the hell use is this phrase? I see it most often said in English by Americans talking about people who aren't John A Smith. But try putting John A Smith into a Chinese name form that wants it in hanzi. There's quite a lot of China to be weird in.
And that loops right back to discussions about 'real names'. Because how the heck do you think you can tell?
Even if you ignore 'other' cultures? There is no name so weird that people can't make it up for their kids, after which point it becomes real.
Stable psuedonyms at least have the virtue of being what we wanted to be called. As opposed to whatever the form made of our names. I get junk mail for Miss Becca, presumably because some system somewhere read beccaelizabeth and chewed it. Like that makes more sense. I'd be happier getting mail for beccaelizabeth. That's actually been me since the mid 90s.
... is time a factor in making a name 'real'? Number of people who call you by it? What if your mum calls you by it, she'd know, right? (Depends which mum.) Does it need to be on an official form somewhere? But someone designed said forms, they have their assumptions too.
Captain Jack Harkness fits in forms, though he apparently doesn't fill them in much if the police database can't find any trace aside from the first user. Is his name less real because there was a first user? Lots of names are recycled down family lines or across society if someone gets famous. Naming after a war hero is a solid traditional reason. And our Jack has used the name a teensy tiny technical thousand years longer than the first user. Does a name become real?
... Jack named himself to do crime. I don't think he'll think it's ever real.
I wonder if his before name would fit in current forms?
Names is interesting. And they get that way because they're very not simple.
denise on "Real Name" policies, which mentioned anonymity, pseudonymity, and the use of self-chosen names (I've seen some people moving to call that state "autonymity", which I like a lot). I looked up autonym and it's a word that means the same as endonym. An autonym "is a name used by a group or category of people to refer to themselves or their language, as opposed to a name given to them by other groups. For example, Deutsche is the autonym of a people known in English as Germans." The opposite is exonym, a name given by outsiders or from a different language.New words :-)
Things I have learned about names this year simply from trying to name my future people so it looks like the whole world went: so many systems ZOMG.
English has First, Middle, Last names, with the Last being a family name that is inherited, and the other two being chosen pretty randomly from baby names books. Except, of course, when they aren't. Also, English uses this here Latin alphabet, with none of them fancy accents, except when it feels like it. And English names don't have punctuation, except in O'Neill and Harkness-Jones and similar.
... English is a language built mostly of exceptions. This irritates me on a regular basis.
Naming systems from other languages do all kinds of EVERYthing.
Quite a lot of them have some kind of family name, inherited. They don't keep it at the end, except when they do. Lots of newspapers I read to hunt out names goes something like Jack O'NEILL so you know which is the family name whatever order they put them in. If I do that in my book I don't know if it will go invisible or if I will be SHOUTING whenever I INTRODUCE someone. Plus half the room will be talking about PARK and Trice will mention Malcolm and, hmmm, that emphasises the difference rather a lot. It also makes it look like FAMILY NAME is the BIG IMPORTANT ONE. Since my imaginary people have it written on their uniform pocket - and I should really get around to mentioning that at some point soon, it's just it's so obvious to everyone they'd never stop and think it, hang on it's not obvious to the metal dude, okay, he'll ask why everyone feels the need to be labelled or something. ANYway... it makes the family name look IMPORTANT. Is it important?
A lot of Asia has the same name. No, really, a lot. More than that. More than that. You can put the names on a pie chart and have not so many slices of pie. Korean names have 45% of people called Kim, Lee or Park. (For comparison, a quick google reckons Smith in the UK is something like 1.22%). If people are referring to Malcolm as Park and thinking it's a unique identifier we can pretty much figure the ship is not Korean or majority Korean staffed. Also wiki has some stuff about formal and rude ways of addressing Korean people and just using their surname would be in the rude pile, so this isn't a ship with Korean naming or mode of address customs.
There's also the Ro Laren thing, though if we get as far as NCC1701-D and humans in general are making assumptions about which one of those is a family name, that's really depressing, cause right now the family-last is seriously not the default. And what kind of personnel file wouldn't include which is the family name or proper form of address? That's just peculiar.
... though one of my characters is currently stuck with a false assumption about Captain Saisei Iteza, but he's only been introduced to her like that, spoken words, three in a row. Calling her Captain Saisei is a plausible guess he could expect to be corrected on. He has not taken into account that you don't necessarily correct explosives on minor points of protocol.
A lot of my ship has the same first name. A new technology lead to a new custom. But then it mixes with the old customs, and people are left trying to differentiate themselves when they're all called Rene. Only using last names, when they've retained levels of formality associated with first/last names, is a limiting possibility. Developing a bazillion nicknames for people called Rene is another. Also, since knowing someone is Rene means knowing something important about them, giving your first name would be a Thing.
I'd like to know more about how revealing names are in societies with a strong caste system. They can be bad enough around here with the class connotations. Is interesting.
Not everywhere feels the need to use a family name. And some places use it, but not in the form of heritable single word, they just list all the family ever.
Arabic names have quite a lot more components than I'm used to. Kunya, ism, nasab, laqab, nisbah. And there's more grammar in them, like 'servant of' and 'the' and 'son of' and 'father of'. I'm reasonably certain I couldn't make one up well enough to name a character, which is kind of sad and reveals mass areas of my ignorance. The room for error in trying to understand them as British pattern names is massive. Even without getting into pronunciation and the tendency of some listeners to give up before you're out of syllables. (The tendency of nicknames and use names to have one, maybe two syllables is just odd, considering how much language that rules out.) It's probably why Alexander Siddig is not Siddig El Fadil now, people asking how to say it, and DVD covers don't generally have names like his long form name on them.
... now I'm wondering if Arabic DVDs do or if they have short poster names...
... I can't distinguish squiggles enough to have a chance of figuring that one out by looking.
Squiggles, otherwise known as writing systems, are another name Thing. It's not just that we have so many alphabets and symbol systems, it's that collapsing them destroys data. And that there's no single agreed upon method for doing so. From anything to anything.
Since I can only type in English with no accents (unless the computer decides something needs an accent, which my auto-correct sometimes does when I'm not looking) my character naming possibilities are limited.
And anything I do to the name systems, any clues I try to include like a very international name set being slotted in to a First&Last=Family paradigm or addressing someone as Park, they're going to go invisible even if I put lots of work in. Local normal is going to be assumed over the top of them. Which is partly because I'm not good enough at other sets to build on their normal, and partly because I'm building a British descended future to play with ideas of Us and Them, so it looks like British normal and that will look like I haven't thought about it. I did, I just... kept it anyway.
The thing that bugs me is discussions about 'weird names'. Dear internets: whatever your name is, your name is weird. You just have to change countries, continents, sometimes even counties, and your name is weird. So what the hell use is this phrase? I see it most often said in English by Americans talking about people who aren't John A Smith. But try putting John A Smith into a Chinese name form that wants it in hanzi. There's quite a lot of China to be weird in.
And that loops right back to discussions about 'real names'. Because how the heck do you think you can tell?
Even if you ignore 'other' cultures? There is no name so weird that people can't make it up for their kids, after which point it becomes real.
Stable psuedonyms at least have the virtue of being what we wanted to be called. As opposed to whatever the form made of our names. I get junk mail for Miss Becca, presumably because some system somewhere read beccaelizabeth and chewed it. Like that makes more sense. I'd be happier getting mail for beccaelizabeth. That's actually been me since the mid 90s.
... is time a factor in making a name 'real'? Number of people who call you by it? What if your mum calls you by it, she'd know, right? (Depends which mum.) Does it need to be on an official form somewhere? But someone designed said forms, they have their assumptions too.
Captain Jack Harkness fits in forms, though he apparently doesn't fill them in much if the police database can't find any trace aside from the first user. Is his name less real because there was a first user? Lots of names are recycled down family lines or across society if someone gets famous. Naming after a war hero is a solid traditional reason. And our Jack has used the name a teensy tiny technical thousand years longer than the first user. Does a name become real?
... Jack named himself to do crime. I don't think he'll think it's ever real.
I wonder if his before name would fit in current forms?
Names is interesting. And they get that way because they're very not simple.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-04 08:22 am (UTC)everyone's chiming in with names from their place
Italian names use commas
Thai family names are unique per family, everyone with a name is related, and they get really long for the same reason as internet addresses
Thai words are abbreviated from the end
Russian names go given patronymic family
lots of stuff
no subject
Date: 2011-08-04 02:01 pm (UTC)That got me thinking, a few years back, about how, while it's not at all officially part of my naming system, I am better known in some communities (particularly the New England contradance community) by my patronym than by my given name -- and I actually introduce myself as "Cora Timsdaughter" in some circumstances.
It's interesting. It's all interesting. Someday I really need to write that epic post on names and naming that I've been meditating on for two or three years at least (especially now it's on everybody's mind because of google plus).
~ c.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-04 02:51 pm (UTC)I rarely use my legal name online, partly due to an inconsistent desire for anonymity. But if I did, it would not be unique. The names I do use online are unique, however. "philippos42" is more likely to be coincidentally duplicated other aliases I have used, but still, it's pretty clearly me.
But if I try to design a name that sounds like a standard-pattern Spanish or English name, someone probably already has it.