Subject: World-historical and religious figures in Lojban

From: "T. Peter Park" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 01:18:08 -0400

Dear Lobypli,
One of the questions which I feel needs resolving (or else an agreement
to leave unresolved) is that of standardized names for world-historical
and religious figures in Lojban.
When I was first active in Lojban, in 1989-1990, I became familiar with
the normal lojbanization of well-known contemporary and recent proper
names, e.g.
la bab lycevalIE = Bob LeChevalier ("la lojbab.)
la djeimz kuk braun. = James Cooke Brown
la djordj buc. = George Bush
la bil klintyn. = Bill Clinton
la mixail gorbaTCOF. = Mikhail Gorbachev
la maudzyDUN = Mao Zedong
la carl deGOL. = Charles DeGaulle
la adolf xitlyr = Adolf Hitler
la karl marks. = Karl Marx
la tcarlz daruin. = Charles Darwin
la gandis. = Gandhi
I also learned a few standardized Lojban divine or quasi-divine
religious titles as gismu, e.g.: 
xriso xis	Christ of Christian belief
bujo buj bu'o	Enlightened One of Buddhism
jegvo jeg je'o	Jehovah, Supreme Being of Judaism/Christianity
However, there seems to be no clear Lojban rule or practice that I'm
aware of for Lojbanizing the proper names of the great religious
leaders--or of major secular world-hisdtorical figures, either.
For instance, apart from his title "Christ" or "Messiah" which has the
offcial Lojban gismu "xriso," Jesus Christ was Yehoshuah (the source of
our Joshua) in Hebrew, Yeshua in the Aramaic that he spoke as his own
native language, Iesous in theGreek in which the New Testament was
written, and Jesus as the Latin rendition of Iesous--names which can be
Lojbanized respectively as /la ieXOcu'ax./, /la iecu'ax./, /la ieSUS.,
and la iesus./ Plus, we have, for instance, the modern English, French,
Spanish, and German pronunciations of Jesus, which we may transcribe
Lojbanically as respectively /djizys/, /jezUS/, /xeSUS/, /iezus/. So,
which one of these we select as the basis for the preferred Lojban cmene
for the founder of Christianity? The most plausible major contenders, I
think, might be /la iecu'ax./, /la ieSUS./, /la iesus./, and /la
DJEsus./
The same problem comes up with Moses. His original Hebrew name was
Mosheh, which would yield Lojban /la mocex./, but most Westerners know
him as Moses, pronounced as some variant of /moses/ or /mozes/ or
/mozys/--so, do we call the founder of Judaism "la mocex." or do we call
him "la moses."? 
Confucius, likewise--his native Chinese name is Kong fuzi, which might
Lojbanize as "la kunfudzys.", but he is usually known in the West by the
Latin name Confucius, subject to any number of distinct national
pronunciations--the usual English/American pronunciation of Confucius
might be Lojanized as "la kynfiucys." or "la konfiuces.", but I believe
the European scholars who first thought up the Latinized Confucius in
the 17th and 18th centuries had in mind something like /konfutsius/,
which of course would Lojbanize as "la konfutsius."--so, just how WOULD
you Lojbanize the great Chinese sage?
Same problem with purely secular huistorical figures--like for instance
Julius Caesar, whom we might Lojbanize either as "la iulius kaisar." or
as "la djuliys sizyr." depending on whether we pick the Classical Latin
or Modern English pronunciation of his name, to say nothing of the
German-based "la iulius tsezar."! 
So, what do you all think, lobypli?
Regards,
T. Peter 
"la tipitr."
<[email-masked]>