Re: Láadan

On 12 Dec, Mau Rauszer wrote:

> John Cowan  <jcowan@...> 2002.12.10. 11:00:57 -5h-kor írta:
>
> > Mau Rauszer scripsit:
> >
> > > Alias. It is my Hungarian (Real Life) name. Mau is my Long Wer name
which=
> > >  I use on the Net.
> >
> > Oops.  I (and maybe Sally too) used the default Western assumption and
> > read "Abraham" as given name and "Zsofia" as family name.  That being
so,
> > since you said you were female, and Abraham is definitely a male given
> > name, I (and maybe Sally) assumed it was a male alias of yours.
> >
> > But now that you say you are Hungarian, all is transparent!
> >
> Ooh.. that's it? :) I did not redesigned my signature for English lists.
Thus
> I will be careful about this. So my name is *Sophia Abraham* alias Mau
Rauser if I want to
> anglicize it.

    Here in Israel, there are many family names that can
also be first names, for example David, or Joseph.
    For those who don't know me, I am a speech-language-
pathologist and I often run into questions as to how to
fill out those all-important forms (  :-P  ), when I get a referral
for "David Joseph" or something similar! People here sometimes
refer kids to me by their first name first and sometimes by their family
name first, so one can never just assume.
    But this only works with male names. (Please, no feminist flames ---
I'm merely pointing out what exists, not justifying it.)
Had I come across the name, Abraham Sophia, I would have
assumed that Abraham would have to be the family name since
Sofia, at least IME, probably wasn't.
    It gets even more confusing with gender-neutral names which also might
be found as family names! For example, |gal| (= wave).
A sadistic parent might decide to name his/her kid |gal| and then,
not only would it not be clear what gender the kid was, but the kid would
be called |gal gal|, and |galgal| in Hebrew means "wheel"!  :-)

Dan Sulani
--------------------------------------------------------
likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a

A word is an awesome thing.

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