Re: First report on Conm

Sarah Marie Parker-Allen scripsit:

> On almost every email list I'm on, and in almost every situation I get in
> involving more than a handful of people, there is more than one Sarah.
Odd that this rarely happens to me, despite bearing the most common of
all male anglophone names.  It is true in my current workgroup, though, and
I always look up when the other John (who has been there much longer
than I) is called for.

> My favorite way of solving the problem was introduced by a former math major:
> the first Sarah on the list in question is Sarah' (or Sarah Prime); the
> second (me) is Sarah" (or Sarah Double Prime).
Arrgh.  Sarah'' *should* be pronounced "Sarah Second".  "Prime" is just
English for "primus" = "first", it's not the *name* of the mark, really.
But nobody listens to me on this one.

> Sometimes we use the identifying phrase method
> ("former-cult-leader-and-amateur-wrestling-federation-founder Sarah" and
> "brilliant-virgin Sarah" are the latest),
*Time* magazine used to be famous for this stylistic quirk, along with
a tendency to inversion, parodies by Wolcott Gibbs as "Backward ran
sentences until reeled the mind."

In the book _Ring of Bright Water_, the author/narrator speaks of his
neighbor in the Scottish Highlands named Calum Murdo McKinnon.  He points
out that this man is never called Calum McKinnon, for there are too many
of those in the neighborhood, nor can he be called Murdo McKinnon, for
those are likewise too numerous.  Nor can he even be called by his true
name, Murdo Calum McKinnon, for those also are so commonplace that
in order to preserve his identity he has been forced to invert his name.
He can also be called Calum the Road, because he lives on the road;
other names of this form include a local Ronald McDonald the Dummy
(because he could not speak).

> In my fifth grade year, there were two girls named Esther Kim in our class
> (one was in fifth grade, the other in sixth).
Not surprising.  Korea has a big shortage of surnames, and since Christians
are either a large minority or a small majority in the South, the same
set of Biblical names are endlessly recycled as Westernized first names.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_

Replies