Re: USAGE: Name adaptation (fuit: GSF revisited)

Benct Philip Jonsson, On 11/05/2007 14:29:
> 10.5.2007 R A Brown wrote:
> > > /Φίλιππος Νεύτων, aka Φιљιπο
> > > Νεφτονα
> >
> > Ah, Ευδαίμων Φίλιππος was attempting to give
> > a Greek rendering of _Newton_ in Νεαπολίδης
>
> Indeed. To translate rather than transliterate names is a
> sometimes occiurring symptom of the artlanger disease. That
> this doesn't come natural to normal people was recently
> illustrated when I asked one of my Russian teacher if
> Бенедикт Филиппович Иванов would be
> a correct rendering of my name in Russian (FYI I am an
> actual Philip's son! :-), and she was a bit nonplussed,
> insisting on Бенкт Филипп Юнссон, and being
> even more cinfused when I suggested that Jonsson may be
> rendered by the more 'classy' Ивáнов rather than
> 'common' Иванóв, to distinguish it from Jönsson which
> is more common in Swedish. I had to explain that I realized
> that normally they would be Юнссон vs. Ёнссон,
> and that I was only playing a game. At least she agreed that
> "Филип" with one п would look strange, and that
> Юнссон should be rendered phonetically!
>
> It seems that hiostorically and globally adaptation and/or
> transliteration of foreign names is far more common than
> translation.
Europeanly, it was surely until the last few decades the norm to translate the given name,
so with respect to the Бенедикт and even the Филиппович it
strikes me that your teacher was being a bit obtuse. AFAIK surname translation
has never been the norm, though, though it's not unheard of (e.g. Oswald
Szemerényi was born Oswald Kaufman(n), I was once told).

> So how do people render names in their conlangs?
> Do names have meaning in your conlangs or not?
Of course all names have meaning, for a name is a pairing of a form and a
meaning! You of course meant something different and fairly obvious, but it is
no trivial task to formulate precisely what you meant...

> My usage with Sohlob is vacillating: sometimes going for
> adaptation, sometimes for translation, but mostly
> Chinese-style 'meaningful adaptation'.
>
> /Éadig Éowine
Is Eadig (= 'Fortunatus'???) a nonce translation, or is there some tradition to
it? I'm wondering if 'blessed' might be rendered differently.

--And.

Reply