Re: People's names

Good points. On the natively, it seems like when I was in Switzerland, 
whenever I introduced myself as /ˈdevɪs/ someone would say, oh, you mean 
/ˈdɑfɪs/, and whenever I said /ˈdɑfɪs/ they would say: oh, /ˈdevɪs/

Mark

Martin Duerst wrote:
> At 01:47 06/02/25, Mark Davis wrote:
> >
> >I don't know what the scope of the source document is, but this seems 
> like a case of over-engineering, unless they are simply meant as 
> "possible examples". Most of these items would be useful only in 
> extremely specialized applications. For the vast majority of 
> applications, a simple <name>Dr. Jonas T. Sulk III</name>field 
> suffices, without trying to break it up into pieces. Delving into 
> surname, baptismal names, Mob nicknames (Misha "Lefty" Wolf), 
> Satanic-ritual aliases, and the like become hugely complicated and 
> difficult to manage. Beyond the simple name, the other most useful one 
> we've found is the <sortby>Sulk, Jonas T.</sortby>.
>
> Well, yes, but one thing is that Misha is working on news, where people's
> names turn up in all forms and shapes. This is different from a simple
> database.
>
> Also, even for some very simple cases, I often wish applications
> would allow two or more name forms. The simplest example is conferences:
> Provide a field for the name as you want it on letters, invoices, and
> so on, and another field for the name as you want it on your nametag.
>
> >The discussion of pronunciation seems somewhat muddled by not 
> recognizing that there are at least a couple of different goals. For 
> most commercial uses, a more typical, and more useful, expression 
> would be what people actually say their name sounds like. What people 
> usually use in practice depends on their source language; a very large 
> number of people are unfamiliar with IPA. For example, my wife's name 
> is "Gundelfinger"; she is very used to writing "sounds like 
> gun-Dell-finger". For a text-to-speech application, on the other hand, 
> IPA would be clearly more suitable.
>
> And then there are people who prefer their name to be pronounced
> 'natively'. Having "Martin" pronounced in an English or German
> way in the middle of a French sentence just doesn't work because
> it sounds like the French female form of that name (Martine).
>
>
> Regards,    Martin.
>
>

Received on Monday, 27 February 2006 02:47:34 UTC