Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Robin on cmene

From: Robin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000 02:23:10 +0300

[email-masked] wrote:

> Well, for cmene as an abstract concept, maybe. But not for
> _my_name_. That is not an arbitrary label (no matter what its
> history is) but a part of my identity -- to myself and to the group in
> which it is used. And, if I use several names (I regularly use four,
> in fact, and a fifth for special occasions), each of them carries with
> it its own aspects of my personality and interests and my special
> relationships with the group in which I use it. To meddle with it is
> to denigrate or ignore that part of me and so me taken as a whole.
> Now, one coming into Lojban certainly can -- and does -- make a
> choice about how to name oneself in that new context. If one
> elects to bring over as much as possible of one's public name or
> one's name from another context, then it is important that that come
> out essentially correctly. The pain of some misses have been
> apparent in other postings, and the urgency of getting it right -- not,
> I think, only to show a mastery of lb phonology (see the worry
> about a choice among several equally lb solutions).
> The above may sound a bit cuckoo, but I think it is essentially the way most
> people
> "really" feel about their names, so I expect to have problems about cmene for
> ever
> hereafter.

So a rose by any other name would not smell so sweet! I would say that
whatever someone's cmene is, that's their name, regardless of phonology
(I, for instance, get irritated by people telling me my name should be
"rabin."!). With names of famous people, I suppose Alfred is right -
choose the Lojnaised form that most closely fits the standard
pronuciation of that language, unless we know that the person in
question would have preferred a non-standard variant e.g. "Robert Burns"
might come out as "rabibeirnz.".

co'o mi'e robin.