Re: Personal names (was Re: Story - TCOAIW)

On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 09:20:44AM +0200, Roberto Suarez Soto wrote:
> On Oct/08/2002, daniel andreasson wrote:
>
> > Speaking of which. Does anyone know where Yoon Ha Lee
> > actually is? Was she abducted by Real Life (TM)? Last message
>
>         Just curious: how do you know she's "she", and not "he", by her
> name? I ask simply because oriental names are a mistery to me O:-)
Actually her name (which is Korean, BTW) is ambiguous, since she told us
herself that it could very well be a masculine name as well. But she did
repeatedly emphasize that she was female, so that's how we know. :-)

>         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?
[snip]

The Ebisedi are *extremely* sensitive to this issue. So, Ebisedian names
are always unambiguous. All names are prefixed by one of fifteen "proper
name prefixes", one for each combination of gender and number. Here are
the prefixes employed:

        Singular        Plural  Nullar
Masc.   e-              he-     emy'-
Fem.    `y-             hy-     `ymy'-
Epi.    o-              ho-     omy'-
Neu.    i-              hi-     imy'-
Doub.   w-              hw-     wmy'-

So, for example, _ekaa'si_ is obviously a singular masculine name,
_heKasanii'_ is a plural masculine name, _`ymy'lii_ is a nullar feminine
name, etc. (It may seem strange to have nullar names, but that is actually
used to indicate the person/thing(s)'s absence.)


T

--
Life is complex. It consists of real and imaginary parts. -- YHL