Re: CHAT: new names (was: Re: Bopomofo and pinyin)

the spelling 'pyjamas' is exotic? why? it's pretty standard around where i
live... i think warm wooly things, not lions and tigers, in this case.

byron

Raymond Brown scripsit:

> Just "Gray"?  The standard spelling of the plain old adjective in Britain
> is 'grey' - and I believe it's the more common spelling in the anglophone
> world outside of the USA.
Indeed.  But some poeple here have read enough non-American works
to actually have different association to "gray" and "grey", making
a (mild) semantic distinction where none was before.
Moss caricatures this as "the lure of the mysterious East in
Kipling's spelling of 'pyjamas'", but it's a real effect.

For myself, "gray" is neutral to mildly negative ("battleship gray", e.g.);
"grey" is positive and associated with mist.  The fantasy novel
"The Grey Mane of Morning", originally published in the U.K.,
kept the same title when published here.

> It was interesting to note that Clinton is using the spelling 'Grey' in
> changing his name to 'Aiden Grey'.  Over here in little ol' Britain, when
> used as a surname it's nearly always "Gray".
Here too, I think.

> >I toyed with this idea briefly ten years ago, and the understanding I had
> >was that in NY and MA, as long as you weren't deliberately trying to
defraud
> >people, you could just start using any old name you wished.
>
> ..or even any new name, I guess - another case where New England (or at
> least part of it) behaves like Old England  :-)
The general position in both the U.K. and the U.S. is that (absent fraud)
you can change your name whenever you want, and you can use as many
names as you want for different purposes.  What the $50 payment is
about is getting a court to take judicial notice of the name change.
This is not legally necessary, but has evidentiary value: it can be
used to convince skeptics that the former Mr. Luxury Yacht is now
Mr. Throatwarbler Mangrove.  Similarly with the newspaper advertisements:
they are essentially evidence of your intent.

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin