Ship of Fools: Preserve national unity! Save us from the ñ!

Thread: Preserve national unity! Save us from the ñ! Board: Hell / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

A court in Brittany has identified an even greater threat to the unity of the Republic than women wearing modest clothes at the beach!

But for the far-sighted intervention in the court, French society could have been shaken to its very foundations by the choice of a Breton couple to call their child Fañch!

Innocuous, you say? A traditional Breton name in Brittany, you say? Ha, you too have been deceived, for in the name lies a deadly threat: it contains the character ñ, which is not recognised in French orthography!

Let us rejoice that the land of liberté, égalité and fraternité has recognised that some diacritics are more égaux* than others!

(Story here and to forestall the obvious comment the accounts in the French press are even more bizarre.)

(Tr.: freedom, equality, brotherhood, equal.)

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

Hostly furry hat on

I'm declaring a unilateral and unauthorised amnesty on untranslated French swear-words, this thread only, and only for as long as it's funny.

Hostly furry hat off

DT
HH

Merde!

Posted by Wesley J (# 6075) on :

Putain, quelle histoire sordide! [= What a miserable tale!]

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

So for fun, I went hunting for British rules about what one may call oneself.

With regards to birth certificates, the registrars seem a little coy about making rules, but the deed poll office offers this collection.

They point out that HM Passport office will not print accents, but that that's fine if the unaccented version of your name is clearly derived from the accented one. Probably that includes things like ü -> ue translations.

They also say that HMPO will convert numbers to words (K8 -> Keight, or possibly K Eight), but that the deed poll office won't allow you to include a number in your name (rather implying that a registrar might).

I gather that UK birth certificates are computer printed these days, which might constrain the creativity of certain whimsical parents - in the old handwritten days, perhaps one could spell one's child's name with a thorn, but today's computer probably makes that impossible.

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

Perhaps if they just call the lad Tilde?

IJ

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

I gather that UK birth certificates are computer printed these days, which might constrain the creativity of certain whimsical parents - in the old handwritten days, perhaps one could spell one's child's name with a thorn, but today's computer probably makes that impossible.

Our little one has a háček in one of his middle names, as a consequence of his Czech ancestry, and the registrar's view was 'If that's how it's spelt, then put it in', so I can say with absolute certainty that accented characters are allowed.

I wouldn't have thought a thorn would pose any problems given that the thorn counts as part of the ASCII Western European character set and háčky generally don't.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Our little one has a háček in one of his middle names, as a consequence of his Czech ancestry, and the registrar's view was 'If that's how it's spelt, then put it in'

I'm glad to hear that you were able to get it through the computer. IME, thoughtless computers are usually more prescriptive than any kind of actual law or regulation. (My personal bugbear are computers and similar forms that assume that people have precisely one middle initial.)

Posted by Dal Segno (# 14673) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
My personal bugbear are computers and similar forms that assume that people have precisely one middle initial.

That a very US thing. Somehow it became culturally normal to have a single middle name in the US, whereas in many other parts of the world things are more complex. Software authors (especially those writing software over a couple of decades ago) often were unaware that things were done differently outside their own cultural norm or found it too complicated to program up all the possibilities.

For example, some Icelandic people do not have surnames which caused awful problems when the Icelandic government bought in some US software that assumes that everyone has a surname.

Then there are the cases that Oren Patashnik documents in the manual for the BibTeX bibliography package showing all the sorts of things that you need to think about if you are to write robust trans-national software. My favourite is Charles Louis Xavier Joseph de la Vallée Poussin.

[ 15. September 2017, 01:09: Message edited by: Dal Segno ]

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Meh. My son has TWO middle names, as does his father, which is mandated by their clan, and freaky tonal and vowel marks are required for all but one. My last name requires something like a tilde (a nga) over the vowel, which you have to get a special font for. Also it's only two letters long, and half the databases round here require a minimum of three letters. The people who congratulate me on my short, easy-to-spell last name have NO idea.

Eta: does the amnesty include Vietnamese swear words? I could teach you all how to say "Eat shit and die."

[ 15. September 2017, 01:18: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

Neaveh has become popular locally. It is heaven spelled backwards ?Hell.

Posted by Rossweisse (# 2349) on :

The big problem with names in the United States is due to whoever set up the rules for Social Security: First name, middle initial, last name, period.

Those of us who go by our middle names are stuck with being known to officialdom by the first names we don't use, and woe betide you (more than the usual woe) if you happen to have a relatively common first name and definitely common surname, as I do.

My father and brother had/have three given names each. My father went officially by his three initials, which of course Social Security could not countenance; my brother (who's in the generation that uses the second of the three names - they alternate) solved his problem by dumping the first one.

If I have a particular libertarian inclination, it's toward letting people decide on their own damned names, without annoying and unnecessary bureaucratic rules.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Rossweisse:

Those of us who go by our middle names are stuck with being known to officialdom by the first names we don't use,

OTOH, it's a pretty good screen for people who you might actually want to talk to vs people who have plucked your name from a list.

Mrs. C and the kids have two middle names each. My attitude is that using either 0 or 2 middle initials is correct, and using 1 is incorrect whichever one you happen to pick.

So for US officialdom, I usually leave the MI box blank because they can't cope with the truth. (And a country that successfully refers to its 41st president with both of his middle initials has no excuses for getting it wrong for normal people.)

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

There's a sci-fi book called "The Man Whose Name Didn't [or Wouldn't?] Fit". Haven't read it, but it includes the kind of situation discussed in the last few posts.

Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :

The nonsense of this is that none of the “allowable” accents appear on French official documents either. My name contains the letter é which always becomes e on official bits of paper. This leads to much irritating mispronunciation.

OTOH a couple of bright sides: at least they’re having a go at Bretons instead of brown people for once. It’s also nice to know that the French public sector has nothing more important to do with its time apart from going on strike because they’re offended about the President of the Republic calling them a bunch of slackers.

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Eta: does the amnesty include Vietnamese swear words? I could teach you all how to say "Eat shit and die."

Vietnam was colonized by the French (until you kicked them out). So why not? Never let it be said that the Ship is not educational.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
I'm glad to hear that you were able to get it through the computer. IME, thoughtless computers are usually more prescriptive than any kind of actual law or regulation.

My employer's customer database stores all names in block capitals. Presumably this represented a significant space saving back in 1990.

Computer-generated customer correspondence then follows a series of erratic rules to capitalise the names properly. The software knows about Scottish names, for example - as a consequence of which I have seen a Spanish customer addressed as Dear Mr MacHo ...

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

I'll second the problems some computers have with names.

We all have three Christian names, plus a hyphenated surname: no forms, paper or computerised, have sufficient space for all Christian names and some can't manage the surname either.

Of course, there is always the computer that thinks you're taking the mick: when number 2 son applied for a National Insurance number, duly filling in his names and enclosing a copy of his birth certificate, he received back a card embossed with the single name "THOMAS". It took 3 months to sort out that one.

While we're on it, don't get me started about registering the birth of a set of twins: believe it or not, they can't save an entry and then amend it to save time for the second (or more) child(ren) so you have to go through the whole "name of father, name of mother, etc" rigmarole again. And if said identical siblings are caesarean delivered they can't record the birth time either if there is less than a minute between them ...

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Neaveh has become popular locally. It is heaven spelled backwards ?Hell.

-Ahem- I know it's kind of beside the point, but it's Nevaeh, actually. [Biased]

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bishops Finger:
Perhaps if they just call the lad Tilde?

Or Enyah, although they'd probably think it was too "foreign" sounding.

The first name of my old Latin teacher, by the way, was Tilda.

[ 15. September 2017, 14:29: Message edited by: Amanda B. Reckondwythe ]

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:

Of course, there is always the computer that thinks you're taking the mick: when number 2 son applied for a National Insurance number, duly filling in his names and enclosing a copy of his birth certificate, he received back a card embossed with the single name "THOMAS". It took 3 months to sort out that one.

Ha!

They did exactly the same thing with my wife when she changed her name. Off go the forms, and back comes a shiny new card embossed with a single name - her second middle name.

She called them and suggested that perhaps they hadn't quite achieved the desired outcome, and perhaps they should try again, and a month later, another shiny new NI card turned up in the post, again bearing the same single name.

Third time was a charm, although it's entirely possible she made them drop both middle names to get to something sensible.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

You'd think a four-letter name would be easy to manage... but no. There are four alternative spellings of our last name and the person you're giving your details to always picks the wrong one.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

A friend has a surname once commonly known as a well-known brand of jelly, beginning with CH. Getting fed to the back teeth with being called "Mrs SH...." she resorted to saying its CH as in CHIT and then waited to see how things were on the envelope [Snigger]

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anoesis:

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Neaveh has become popular locally. It is heaven spelled backwards ?Hell.
-Ahem- I know it's kind of beside the point, but it's Nevaeh, actually.

Thx. We got into a discussion and did a little local discussion. Apparently they've almost never turned down a name here. Some names which came up who people could attest are real include: Bingo, Corky, Horntip, Violence, and Joodas. We also discussed people named after places: London, Utah, Africa.

Posted by Callan (# 525) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Hostly furry hat on

I'm declaring a unilateral and unauthorised amnesty on untranslated French swear-words, this thread only, and only for as long as it's funny.

Hostly furry hat off

DT
HH

Merde!

Surely it would be more appropriate, in this context, to swear in Breton? [Biased]

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

If you can manage it, knock yourself out...

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

To the official in Quimper who refused (at first) to include the tilde:

Kerzh da garc'hat, mab ar c'hast...

(Which, being interpreted, signifieth 'Get lost, you sonofabitch' in Breton. I think.)

IJ

Posted by Callan (# 525) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bishops Finger:
To the official in Quimper who refused (at first) to include the tilde:

Kerzh da garc'hat, mab ar c'hast...

(Which, being interpreted, signifieth 'Get lost, you sonofabitch' in Breton. I think.)

IJ

Posted by Rossweisse (# 2349) on :

Years ago, a friend who was a substitute teacher reported a first-grader named Vagina. Poor little girl.

Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Rossweisse:
Years ago, a friend who was a substitute teacher reported a first-grader named Vagina. Poor little girl.

Is there no official power of veto against names where you live?

Here the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages can refuse to register a name ( I know titles like King, Queen and Justice are not allowed, but I think the Register can refuse other names too).

Huia

Posted by Rossweisse (# 2349) on :

I expect they can reject outright obscenity or profanity, but otherwise things seem to be pretty wide open.

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

BF--

quote:
Originally posted by Bishops Finger:
To the official in Quimper who refused (at first) to include the tilde:

Kerzh da garc'hat, mab ar c'hast...

(Which, being interpreted, signifieth 'Get lost, you sonofabitch' in Breton. I think.)

IJ

Reading, one might think it might be Klingon, rather than Breton.

Reading the translation, one might be convinced--though it isn't quite nasty enough!
[Biased]

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

Huia--

quote:
Originally posted by Huia:
Is there no official power of veto against names where you live?

Here the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages can refuse to register a name ( I know titles like King, Queen and Justice are not allowed, but I think the Register can refuse other names too).

AFAIK, US registrars don't have that power, except maybe in cases of naming the baby after someone notoriously evil, like Osama bin Laden or a certain Austrian. And that would most likely wind up in court.

Until this thread, I thought France was the only country that regulated names. (Does the French Academy (?) still regulate what new words can be part of official French? IIRC, there was a fuss about "les blue-jeans" and "le picnic"...maybe in the '70s?)

Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :

Golden Key, I don't know this for a certainty, but I have read that children in the UK couldn't be given Royal titles for a name either (it was a news article about a man wanting to call his daughter "Princess").

Come to think of it, apart from The Artist Formerly Known as... the only time I've heard "Prince" used as a name was for an Alsatian dog - but he did have a regal bearing [Biased]

.

Huia

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Huia--

quote:
Originally posted by Huia:
Is there no official power of veto against names where you live?

Here the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages can refuse to register a name ( I know titles like King, Queen and Justice are not allowed, but I think the Register can refuse other names too).
AFAIK, US registrars don't have that power, except maybe in cases of naming the baby after someone notoriously evil, like Osama bin Laden or a certain Austrian. And that would most likely wind up in court.

Until this thread, I thought France was the only country that regulated names. (Does the French Academy (?) still regulate what new words can be part of official French? IIRC, there was a fuss about "les blue-jeans" and "le picnic"...maybe in the '70s?)

A while back a Tennessee magistrate got sacked for unilaterally ruling a child couldn't be called Messiah and demanding the parents change his first name to Martin (which was his mom's maiden name).

From a CBS article:

quote:
Ballew (the child support magistrate) surprised both parents by ordering that the baby's name change to Martin McCullough, saying that the name Messiah was not in the baby's best interest. Her written order stated that "Labeling this child 'Messiah' places an undue burden on him that as a human being, he cannot fulfill."
She also said that the name would likely offend many residents of Cocke County, with its large Christian population.

Both parents agreed this was crap and united to protest this. Ms. Ballew's judicial boss agreed.

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Huia:

quote:
Originally posted by Rossweisse:
Years ago, a friend who was a substitute teacher reported a first-grader named Vagina. Poor little girl.
Is there no official power of veto against names where you live?

Perhaps her parents came from Concepcion. Or Colon.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

It's well known that life in the modern age is hell for people with the surname Null.

Posted by jbohn (# 8753) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Huia:
Golden Key, I don't know this for a certainty, but I have read that children in the UK couldn't be given Royal titles for a name either (it was a news article about a man wanting to call his daughter "Princess").

Come to think of it, apart from The Artist Formerly Known as... the only time I've heard "Prince" used as a name was for an Alsatian dog - but he did have a regal bearing .

Huia

Had a student years ago named President.

In the US, there is virtually nothing that stops parents naming their spawn whatever they like.

Posted by Dogwalker (# 14135) on :

My son was in a class where first names were the rule. Two brothers were in the class, and both had the first name José, pronounced Spanish-style. (The family used a middle name, of course.)

The class solved this by calling them "Hose-A" and "Hose-B".

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dogwalker:
My son was in a class where first names were the rule. Two brothers were in the class, and both had the first name José, pronounced Spanish-style. (The family used a middle name, of course.)

The class solved this by calling them "Hose-A" and "Hose-B".

When I lived in the dorms at the University of Washington, we had on our floor two girls (18 year olds are hard to call women/men when you're 55) with the same first name -- which isn't coming to mind so we'll say Donna. One was caucasian and one was African-American, so we called them "The Black One" and "The White One." This got shortened to TBO and TWO. The white one then after a short time became Donna 2 for obvious reasons, making the black one Donna 1. Problem solved.

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

It seems that most male choristers are either named Dave or have Dave as an honorary name.

We solved the problem in a church choir I once sang in by distinguishing among Big Dave, Little Dave, Old Dave, Young Dave, Blond Dave, Dave the Redhead, and Dave-in-Charge (the latter being a vestryman).

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

A parallel example from the BBC by the late great Frank Muir (begin at "We each had a Toblerone-shaped wooden wedge ...".

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

And what about the 'new Bruce' sketch from Monty Python?

Posted by Ian Climacus (# 944) on :

Iceland recently accepted 5 new names:

quote:
Ónarr and Eros for boys and Vök, Nala, and Natasja for girls

Eros!?! I'm guessing a good Saga name and not the Greek love...

Posted by Rossweisse (# 2349) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ian Climacus:
Eros!?! I'm guessing a good Saga name and not the Greek love...

One certainly hopes so.

Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :

I’m not sure France regulates names that much. Acquaintance with a large number of schoolteachers has taught me that people in France are perfectly capable of calling their offspring absurd and unfortunate things. Example: Marie-Prune. Also a little Modi (pronunciation the same as “maudit”, meaning “accursed”). The objection seems to be the inclusion of a particular letter not in the standard French alphabet – not that this makes it any less ridiculous.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

Yes, that is my understanding as well.

If parents are allowed to register Fañch as a name, then that is a terrible Slippery Slope that leads to parents trying to register names in Cyrillic or Arabic.

Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :

Just out of interest, how the hell are you supposed to pronounce Fañch! (or indeed Fañch) - ?

Fannyitch?

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:

If parents are allowed to register Fañch as a name, then that is a terrible Slippery Slope that leads to parents trying to register names in Cyrillic or Arabic.

Where's your imagination, Ricardus?

Tengwar? Klingon?

Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :

This story dates itself, and is of a teenage mum somewhere in the North of England who wanted to call her baby Pocahontas. The Social Worker tactfully asked how this would go down when she went to school. "That's a thought. I'll call her Pocahontas-Marie - no one can take the piss out of that!"

The woman who told me swore she was that Social Worker.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Just out of interest, how the hell are you supposed to pronounce Fañch! (or indeed Fañch) - ?

Fannyitch?

AIUI the ñ in Breton shows that the preceding vowel is nasal (and thus resembles a French n in some respects). So Fañch rhymes with the French word blanche. (White)

Without the tilde it is pronounced like an English n. So Fanch, if it existed in Breton, would be pronounced like 'Fansh' in 'Fanshaw'.

Posted by Ian Climacus (# 944) on :

Quebec relaxes some guidelines...

quote:
Grilled cheese is as OK as "sandwich au fromage fondant", cocktail instead of "coquetel" gets a pass, baby-boom can be used instead of "bébé-boum" and softball is fine in place of "balle-molle".

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
I’m not sure France regulates names that much. Acquaintance with a large number of schoolteachers has taught me that people in France are perfectly capable of calling their offspring absurd and unfortunate things. Example: Marie-Prune. Also a little Modi (pronunciation the same as “maudit”, meaning “accursed”). The objection seems to be the inclusion of a particular letter not in the standard French alphabet – not that this makes it any less ridiculous.

According to the Guardian, French parents have been free to name their kids whatever they want since 1993.

But the article also implies that prior to '93, people were required to name their kids after the saints' day on which they were born, which I find hard to believe, as it would very much go against the famed secularism of the French state. Maybe they just mean that was a common practice, but the placement of that sentence just before the one about the law being changed implies that saints' names were mandatory before the change.

I do remember reading articles in the early 90s about the French having a list from which babies' names had to be chosen, so that part, as far as I know, is true.

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
I do remember reading articles in the early 90s about the French having a list from which babies' names had to be chosen, so that part, as far as I know, is true.

I remember hearing the same about Portugal, though it may have only been true during the regime of Salazar and his successors.

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

Yesterday Kim Jung Un called Trump a dotard, which is linked to the French "radoter," which means to repeat things over and over out of forgetfulness.

These two chubby cheeked, funny haired guys would be hilarious together if it wasn't for .. you know.

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

Hmmm...if everyone in the world pitched in some spare change (such as they might afford), perhaps we could get a one-year, exclusive lease on a Club Med facility. Then Kim and T could have a nice sabbatical, bromance, etc. And the rest of us could rewind the world and get on with out lives.
[Smile]

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