Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 August 20

= August 20 =

chinese
whats the difference between a 图书馆 and a 书馆? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.75.5.178 (talk) 15:32, 20 August 2012 (UTC)


 * According to google translate both terms mean "library" but 图 on its own means map. μηδείς (talk) 16:27, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * It may be helpful to understand that "图书" is a formal term for books and "书馆" is not even a word in general currency. --68.175.38.81 (talk) 03:35, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

图书馆 is "library", 书馆, which is less common, may mean primary school in Classical Chinese.--刻意(Kèyì) 15:09, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Interestingly, "书馆" can also apparently (I am not a native speaker) refer to a teahouse featuring performances by storytellers (who are known as 评书).--68.175.38.81 (talk) 10:11, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Follow-up on unusual children's names
A joke comment by KageTora in a previous question got me to wondering. Is it permissible to give a child a name using letters or characters not used in the language of someone's homeland. In the U.S., there are occasionally situations where even diacritical marks cause issues. (And then there is Jennifer 8. Lee, who gave herself that middle "name".) But what if someone really wanted to spell a child's name with a Þ or a ə or an undotted ı? In Hawaii, does a name ever have an okina in it, and could it be done elsewhere? Could a Swedish name have an ñ if the parents wanted? → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 21:11, 20 August 2012 (UTC)


 * And, for that matter, can your name just be an unpronounceable symbol, as in "The Artist Formerly Thought to be Sane" ? StuRat (talk) 21:15, 20 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The legal name will depend on what's permitted by the civilian authorities, and rules about names vary wildly between jurisdictions. But outside of that, you can basically call yourself or your children whatever you want.  Just don't ever expect others to comply slavishly with either the spelling or the pronunciation of that name.  If it's unusual for that culture, they will tend to convert it into something closer to what they're familiar with.  Many examples.  I have 2 friends of Serbian heritage, originally named Danica, pronounced /DAH-nitsa/.  They went to school, and one came home to report to her parents she was now "Denise", and the other reported she was now /duh-NEE-ka/.  Both new names stuck. --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  23:00, 20 August 2012 (UTC)


 * In Germany, given names are required to make it clear which gender a person is and must not negatively effect their wellbeing. 203.27.72.5 (talk) 03:22, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, they're required to make it clear which gender a person is. I suspect a person's well-being will be negatively affected by being given some of the names listed here. Angr (talk) 06:07, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Jinmeiyō kanji is relevant here. —Tamfang (talk) 04:54, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Also relevant here are Register office and Civil registry. Native-born German, Austrian and Swiss nationals of Turkish origins will surely be permitted to be registered with Öö and Üü in their names, but for the other special characters of the Turkish alphabet (Çç, Şş, İ, ı, ğ, and the circumflex-modified vowels), I'm not sure. --Theurgist (talk) 09:09, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * As other people say, it depends on the jurisdiction what is legally considered a 'name' and which characters can be used in a legal name. I can't find a reference right now, but I believe that a Thai name has to be a traditional 'Thai name', so neither foreign names nor 'invented' names can be used. (The exception being that a person with a non-Thai cultural heritage is allowed a non-Thai name.)
 * In Norway, there are various limits on what names people can take. For example, a person can't have a title as a name, i.e. 'King' or 'Lord' can't be your firstname. (Not sure about 'Earl', though - the cognates 'Jarle' and 'Jarl' are perfectly acceptable names.) There is also a restriction on what characters a person's name can contain. Obviously, the 29 letters of the Norwegian alphabet. I once read that the Sámi letter á was not permissible, but that has, presumably, been changed since, as it is permissible now. Interesting that the OP should mention ñ: I read an article in newspaper, I think about a year ago, where a Norwegian-Spanish couple wanted their daughter to have the dad's last name, which contained the letter ñ. The register, however, didn't have 'technical support' for that character (i.e. the character wasn't permissible for a Norwegian name), so she would have to use a simple n instead. V85 (talk) 16:26, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Regarding Thailand, the Person Name Act, BE 2505 (1962) only mandates that names not be similar to the King or Queen's or royal titles, and not contain rude words. In practice the guidelines issued to registrars used to call for names to have actual meanings (except for foreign or other religious names), but lately this requirement had also been deprecated. Many Thai parents nowadays opt for extremely ridiculous meaningless unpronounceable names for their children, seemingly aiming to jumble together as many rare consonants as possible. --101.109.223.81 (talk) 16:51, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Having gone back and looked at (what I assume) is the source where I got the information on Thais having to have a 'Thai name', the source seems to be built on rather weak research on this point. As the anon says, guidelines calling for names to have actual meanings would mean that names would have to follow some sort of tradition, even if that does allow for the creation of new names. V85 (talk) 16:12, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

In Germany, according to this, the civil authorities are bound by an international agreement to respect foreign diacritics in names that are spelled natively in the Latin script. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:23, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

In the U.S., only the 26 letters of the English alphabet are recognized. Birth certificates are issued (in my state, at least) in all-caps, and no diacritical marks can even be entered into the system which registers births (our laws do not recognize any distinction between a letter with and without a diacritical mark). If you apply for a name change, the documents may contain diacritical marks and/or camelCase, but they are not regarded as meaningful. (I spent a year doing data entry at our Center for Health Statistics, and became depressingly familiar with modern naming trends; our daughter [today is her birthday!!!!] has no names that cannot be attested for the past 500 years.) -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  18:12, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * You realise of course, that by chosing such a name for your daughter, she will be constantly irritated later in her life by phone receptionists who would be much more compfortable spelling something like "Queen Latifah" or "Shya Labuff". 203.27.72.5 (talk) 20:56, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

The Spanish ñ is simply a modern orthographic variant of double nn with the tilde signifying the second n. μηδείς (talk) 23:05, 25 August 2012 (UTC)