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From: Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Lojban forms of names
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:14:51 -0400
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On Monday 29 September 2008 11:56:57 komfo,amonan wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 9:32 AM, Donald McLean <dmclean62@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I am just getting started with Lojban and so there are still many
> > things that I do not yet understand so please excuse me if this is an
> > obvious newbie question. I have not yet seen an answer in any of the
> > resources that I have encountered.
> >
> > One of my children has a name that starts with an 'H'. As near as I
> > can tell, the only use of this sound in Lojban is the apostrophe to
> > separate two vowels. What, then are the most common approaches for
> > handling this situation when converting names?
>
> I usually consider the etymology when Lojbanizing names. For example, if
> the name is 'Hannah' (Hebrew), I would go with {xanat.}, because Lojban {x}
> is the sound of the initial consonant of the Hebrew word, & because in
> other Semitic languages, feminine nouns end with a {t} sound. While if the
> name is 'Helena' (Greek), I would go with {.elenas.}, because the Greek
> begins with a "rough breathing" (like English 'h') which is no longer
> pronounced, and an {s} sound marks the nominative singular in many Indo
> European languages (maybe just for masculine nouns, but what are you gonna
> do?).

"-s" is also the feminine singular genitive ending in Greek (though the alpha 
often turns to eta, at least in Attic-derived dialects) and "-n", the other 
generally added consonant, is the accusative ending.

For Basque names, I add "-k", which is both the ergative ending and part of 
the local genitive ending. E.g. {la pablos.saratcagek. zvati la donostiak.}

Pierre