Re: Butchered Foreign Names

Steg Belsky wrote:
>
> On Tue, 5 Sep 2000 09:23:54 -0400 Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...> writes:
> > ObConLang: Do y'all deal with butchered foreigners' names in your
> > conlangs?  :-)  By some strange coincidence, my name is entirely
> > pronounceable in Chevraqis.  My boyfriend's name is a nightmare (but
> > then, his last name is Betzwieser, which is a nightmare in Korean,
> > too).
> >
> > YHL

Well, my two important conlangs just try to adapt the sounds the best
they can, while keeping to their normal phonological constraints.
Nevokányi has a pretty large inventory of sounds, so my name would be
<Nikol Perin> /nikol pErin/ and Betswieser would be <Becvizör>
/betsvizYr/.  Ini, on the other hand, has only nine phonemes, allows no
consonant clusters, and nouns must begin with a vowel.  So my name would
be <Aniko Apanin> and I don't even want to think about what Betswieser
would be :)

In a newish lang of mine which uses triconsonantal roots there are
certain vowels that you plug in to make acceptable male and female first
names.  Since none of these would probably actually be close to your
name, you would probably be able to choose whichever one you liked
best.  And you would have three consonants from your name -- if it only
had two you'd probably add an h in the middle or something.  So for me,
my three consonants would be ncl and I would be able to choose between
Enecöl, Nycil, Nöcülö, Öncel, and Nácál.  Nácál /nakal/ is probably
closest to my actual name, but I like Enecöl /EnEkYl/ best.  This is
butchery but at least it sounds pretty, and it's a personal choice!  I'm
not sure about last names though...

Nicole