Personal names

* Roberto Suarez Soto said on 2002-10-09 09:20:44 +0200
> ObConlang: how do you deal with this in your conlangs? Do masculine and
> feminine names follow any special rule to distinguish ones from the other?
It's the other way in my conculture, you should *not* be able to guess a
persons gender from the name. Preferably, the name shouldn't mean anything
either, or be famous, as that leads to bad luck for the child.

Name-taboos are quite widespread here on earth, take the Ashanti for
instance: they name their children after the day in the week they were
born on, where in the order of siblings it was born (firstborn,
secondborn etc.). I don't have my Ashanti dictionaries/grammars here at
work so I can't give you the entire list...

Then there's taboos against giving a name that belonges to somebody who
has died, as already mentioned in this thread. "My" lot solves the
"don't name after famous persons" taboo by having nicknames,
self-chosen or not, being the real, official name so that the
generic-sounding given-names stay unknown and thus are free to be
reused.

It seems to me that in the US, you can often tell whether a name is for
a girl, but not necessarily if it's for a boy; as you have the
traditional
girls' names but in addition many girls are given once typically boys'
names. Furthermore, many girls have masculinified nicknames...
    Harriet -> Harry
    Erica -> Eric
etc.


t.