Re: describing names

Majken wrote:
This little story brings me to my
>actual question.
>
>1. Her name is Mary
>2. Her name is beautiful
>
>The first sentence tells me her name, while the second
>only describes it. But the only difference is the last
>word. There is no way to be sure that she isn't called
>Beautiful, except that is an unusual name. How do
>other languages solve this problem?
A belated welcome! rapinda!

Many languages would resolve this problem by making "beautiful" a verbal
form, which is what my Kash does:

arañi mina 'her name is Mina' (aran 'name', -ni '3d poss.', no copula)
arañi yavirik 'her name is beautiful' (ya- '3s subj. marker', virik '(be)
beautiful')

There is also the idiomatic verbal _vele aran_ lit. 'give name' = 'to name'
as in:

yavele aran mina anayeni 'she named her child Mina'
3s-[give name] Mina(nom.) child-dat.-poss.

_vele aran_ must be followed by a personal name (in nominative case), which
is in apposition with _aran_, and the person named is in the dative.
Technically this violates S-V-IO-DO order.  Otherwise--

yavele anayeni aran ehas 'she gave her child a strange name' which follows
normal order of constituents S-V-IO-DO

Note: yavele aran ehas anayeni 'she named her child Strange', and conversely
yavele anayeni aran mina 'she gave her child the name Mina' would imply that
Mina was only a temporary name or nickname, not the child's "real" name.

This complication in Kash syntax was inspired by one of James McCawley's
amusing examples:
"They named their child Fafnir"
"They named their child something strange"