Re: OT: Anthroponymics

On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 15:45 +1000, Yahya Abdal-Aziz wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Oct 2005, John Vertical wrote:
> >
> > >How many first names can people have in different nooks of the world?
> > >Nowadays Swedes can have any number from one upwards, but most have
> > >only two. (I and my son have three each, but I never use Jung 'coz
> > >most people -- even Swedes -- think it's a surname.)
> >
> > In Finland, the standard is two first names, but one and three are also
> > allowed by law. I think joint names such as Jean-François count as two,
> but
> > don't hold me on that.
> >
> I'm not aware of any Australian law limiting the number of given names
> a person can have.  It's common for most people born since the beginning
> of the 20th Century to have two given names, of which the first name is
> almost always the one chosen for everyday use.  A few people have only
> one given name, whilst some have three or four.
(And, indeed, what everyone else seems to have called "first names" are
called "given names" here; you only have one first name in Australian
usage at least, which is either your first given name, or the given name
you prefer to use depending on context. I don't know if that's because
most of the discussion on this topic was by non-native speakers, or if
Australian use does differ from British or American.)

> If you decide to change your name (say because your Dad was born in
> Philadelphia to an alphabetising faimly), they will probably insist that
> you have at least one given name and at most one - possibly hyphenated
> - surname.  So you could take out a deed poll at the registry office to
> change your name to -
> Freddie Mercury-Jones-Hampton, or to -
> Freddie Mercury Jones Hampton, but not to -
> Freddie.
I understand that some states don't use deed-poll for name changes. For
instance, if you want to change the name on your drivers licence in
Victoria, you need a deed poll certificate thing from before 1986, or a
change of name certificate from after 1986. I imagine for the most part
it's just a change of name (for the name-changing thing), but they felt
like noting the difference on the brochure they gave me when they gave
me the bill for my new (full, yay!) licence.

> Unlike the USA, we don't use the form John X Jones very much; it's
> either plain John Jones (even in signatures) or the full John Xavier Jones.
So I'm told, but unless Americans use it in an everyday introduction, I
think that might be wrong. My licence, for instance, says "TRISTAN A
MCLEAY"; most mail is addressed to the same (the next-most often being,
I think, "T. A. McLeay"). In fact, of all the things with my name I keep
in my wallet, the only thing which *doesn't* say "Tristan A McLeay" is
my Free Software Foundation membership CD---an American organisation
(which says "Tristan McLeay").

> Also, unlike in some countries, it's perfectly OK here to use a diminutive
> as a given name: Johnny, Rob, Jim, Jack, Meg, etc are common enough.
>
> Funny thing about "diminutives": they're often longer than the full name,
> even though the label diminutive seems to imply they're smaller.  For
> example, "Johnny" is a diminutive of "John".  My favourite diminutive is
> one I learnt in German class, when Mutter spoke of her son Johannes as:
> "Meine kleine Hans-    -ie-    -lein-     -chen".
> [ my    little   Johnny  little   little     little   ]
Diminutives are not, I believe, meant to be shortenings of names/words
(except in English), but rather mean the thing they're talking about is
small. Seeing as you normally add a diminutive to a root, it doesn't
seem odd to me that they should be longer. (In English for some reason
shortenings of words are called diminutives, such as "arvo" for
"afternoon", "the Salvos" for "the Salvation Army". I don't know why.
There's nothing small about an "arvo", merely colloquial.)

...

> > angreifenvonandererintelligentgeschopfsvonhinzwischenternartigraum Senior.
>
> That "Senior" at the end implies, of course, that he named one of
> his sons:
I notice that. I was scared.

--
Tristan.