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Grex > Language > #91: it's a girl - question on how to spell her name |  |
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Message |
| 14 new of 80 responses total. |
alchemis
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response 67 of 80:
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Jan 17 15:33 UTC 1998 |
Actually, we chose Diane because we liked it. I hadn't thought about Diana
at all. Dang. Back to the drawing board...
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keesan
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response 68 of 80:
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Jan 17 17:45 UTC 1998 |
I have a friend named Deena, which may be Hebrew, close enough? My mother's
best friend in high school was Dinny, from Diane. Dana, Donna, Dinah?
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senna
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response 69 of 80:
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Jan 17 19:14 UTC 1998 |
Nothing wrong with Diane. There are people named Diane.
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gibson
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response 70 of 80:
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Jan 18 06:48 UTC 1998 |
What i'd like to know, why, when foriegn names are translated into
the english alphabet, aren't they spelled phonetically instead of throwing
in so many extra letters?
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orinoco
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response 71 of 80:
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Jan 18 19:08 UTC 1998 |
Well, many foreign languages use the same characeter-set as english, but with
different meanings for some characters - like 'ch', which sounds like 'k' in
some languages, 'sh' in others, etc.
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keesan
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response 72 of 80:
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Jan 19 04:17 UTC 1998 |
There are often sounds that English does not even have. It's the same problem
putting names into many other languages. Japanese has a special alphabet for
spelling foreign names. Czech takes over German names spelled with the German
letters u and o with an umlaut (two dots) over them. I am curious how French
and Chinese and other languages handle the problem.
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davel
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response 73 of 80:
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Jan 19 18:29 UTC 1998 |
In addition to what orinoco & keesan said (both correct, not complaining),
for many languages there's a history behind transliteration into English, &
sometimes the pronunciation of the other language has actually changed. I've
been told that this was part of the reason for the major changes in
transliteration of Chinese names a couple of decades or so ago - "Peking"
became "Beijing", "Mao Tse Tung" became "Mao Zedong", etc. (OK, I'm probably
hashing the current forms. Sorry.) This kind of thing is, after all, the
reason for a lot of silent letters in *English* words - the "k" in "knife"
or "knight" was once pronounced, for example.
An example of what keesan mentioned: I've been told that the silent "g" in
the word "gnu" represents a glottal stop in an African language from which
we got that word. No corresponding English sound - to pronounce the "g" as
we would reading "phonetically" being no closer to the original than is
leaving the sound out entirely.
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gibson
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response 74 of 80:
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Jan 21 04:22 UTC 1998 |
What i mean is we could make the pronunciation so much easier
for our standards.
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mta
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response 75 of 80:
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Jan 27 01:11 UTC 1998 |
My maiden name was "Delaney", which is Irish and means that my family
originated on the Slaney River and was "dark" or "black".
My married name is "Tucker", which has something to do with the making of
cloth, though I don't remember what. (There's also, apparently, a german form
of "Tucker", but I have no idea whatb that means.)
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keesan
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response 76 of 80:
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Jan 27 20:54 UTC 1998 |
Tucker - one who tucks, or a piece of lace or cloth in the neckline of a
dress. Tuckpoint - to finish mortar joints between bricks or stones. A
tucker may have been a mason's assistant.
The baby's name will be spelled Zhao Jinghan, where han means morning (she
was born in the morning, like most of us) and jing means water (born near Lake
Michigan, in Chicago. The parents, after hearing all the possible
pronunciations suggested by grexers, decided to choose a name with an
unambiguous pronunciation. So grexers have actually determined a baby's name!
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mta
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response 77 of 80:
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Jan 27 22:35 UTC 1998 |
Nope, it's not a mason's assistant -- at least in the books I researched in
Tucker had something to do with weaving and dying cloth. It was a specific
job, but I don't remember which one.
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keesan
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response 78 of 80:
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Jan 28 02:11 UTC 1998 |
Lots of people were involved in weaving, which was big-money industry in the
middle ages, espeically England. Weaver/Webber/Webster and Fuller are common
names. Dyer. Spinner and Spindler (?). Could the Whites have been
bleachers? Let us know about Tucker.
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lifeline
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response 79 of 80:
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Mar 2 15:44 UTC 1998 |
Well, it seems esiest to type it as Mayhan, but it seems more lingustically
correct to spellit as Maehan. Anyway, have a nice day...
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keesan
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response 80 of 80:
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Mar 2 17:22 UTC 1998 |
You must not have read this whole item. Her name is now Jinghan, her parents
decided to give her something easy to spell and pronounce.
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