SC - Re: OT: Naming

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Nanna Rognvaldardottir wrote:
> 
> Adamantius wrote:
> 
> >But yes, some arm of the French government's drive to eliminate English
> >terms from the French language, including terms like "e-mail", which
> >they feel oughtta be called "courieur electronique" or some such, has
> >made reference to a need to drive the English language from _their_
> Internet.
> 
> Yes, well, we do this quite successfully in Iceland without feeling the need
> to call it "our" Internet - Icelanders don´t say "e-mail", they say
> "tölvupóstur", computer is "tölva", and so on. But then, we don´t use the
> international terms for telephone, television or radio, either ...

And there's nothing wrong with that. You're using your language as a
tool where appropriate. You're not launching a pro-active campaign to
reverse the effects of The Pernicious Conspiracy To Force Everybody To
Speak English And Forget Their Culture. Which admixture of languages, I
might add, the Normans didn't seem to have a problem when it was French
being rammed down the throats of the English. 
 
> And yes, we do have a list of approved baby names. So do the other Nordic
> countries, I believe. But people will in the majority of cases get approval
> for a name that isn´t on the list. We used to have a system that was very
> much like the SCA naming rules, as I´ve understood them - if you could
> document that the name you wanted had been used a number of times within a
> given period, it was approved. Now it is much easier to get approval.

Well, I can see (not necesarily approve, but at least can comprehend)
having a system whereby it isn't so much a matter of naming your child
something not officially approved, but more a matter of making it less
difficult to keep track of people by registering names. I can imagine
the county clerk, or whoever keeps track of this stuff, saying, "Jorge?
That's not a name. I'll write down 'George'." 

Many people in the U.S.A. have had their surnames changed in this way. I
suspect in Nordic lands the question of patronymics as a sign of
paternity might be a much more important issue, perhaps having gone from
a downright necessity to a tradition more recently than in other countries.

Adamantius  
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com