[lojban-beginners] Re: Lojban forms of names

[Nathaniel Krause <nathanielkrause@yahoo.com>]

--- On Mon, 9/29/08, Donald McLean <dmclean62@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Donald McLean <dmclean62@gmail.com>
> Subject: [lojban-beginners] Lojban forms of names
> To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
> Date: Monday, September 29, 2008, 8:32 AM
> 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?
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Donald


In any language, names that are adopted from foreign languages tend to become deformed, because of the differing sound systems of the languages involved (in English and some other languages, we also have the additional problem of spelling pronunciations). The extent of the change varies depending on the specifics of the name and of the target language (Mandarin Chinese, for instance, has a very small range of possible syllables, with the result that the approximations of some foreign names seem more hypothetical than actual), but some change is basically a given. In this case, Lojban's insistence that all cmevla names end in consonants is a bit unusual and idiosyncratic, but I would imagine there are many languages in the world which have [x] instead of [h]. Lojban words must use the sounds that are available in Lojban. Still, people are naturally quite attached to their own names, and it's impossible for everyone to be happy with the results of
 Lojbanisation.

If you are unsatisfied with the most straightforward Lojbanised form, there are alternatives. As Elmo suggested, you could translate the meaning of your daughter's name into Lojban, or simply choose a completely new Lojban name. As komfn suggested, you might be able to take a different approach to the original name. Speaking from personal experience, I usually go by "Nat" in English; however, I didn't like the sound of the obvious Lojbanic versions, {net} or {nat}, perhaps because they sound like random English words (I'm a General American speaker, so I pronounce "knot" the same as {nat}). So, I decided to take a different portion of my full name, the "than" in Nathaniel, see how that sounded in Lojban. {sen} doesn't sound very much like "than", really, but to my ear it makes a pretty passable name, anyway, and so I have generally gone by that.

mu'o mi'e sen