Lameen’s Jabal al-Lughat post Chenoua and the rectification of names made me think more deeply about languages and what we call them, and I’m bringing it here in the hope that it will do likewise for you. (I’ve quoted his words, but you’ll have to go to his post for the links.)
According to Ethnologue – or even to the HCA – Chenoua (Tacenwit) is one of the larger Berber/Amazigh languages of Algeria, spoken west of Algiers from Tipasa almost to Tenes. Unfortunately, no one seems to have told the speakers, who call their own language Haqḇayliṯ or Haqḇayləḵṯ – i.e. Kabyle. Chenoua is the name of one particular area, a mountain near Tipasa, and speakers from other areas are often entirely unfamiliar with the term; I recently learned of a first-language speaker who had reached her twenties without ever hearing of it.
This is not to say that they speak the same language in Tipasa as in Tizi-Ouzou! In fact, “Chenoua” is much more closely related to Chaoui than to what is usually called “Kabyle”. But “Kabyle” is just an Anglicisation of Arabic qbayǝl – “tribes”. It came to be applied to mountain-dwelling groups like this in the Ottoman period as a broad ethno-political category, not a linguistic one; around Jijel, communities who have spoken Arabic for many generations still call themselves Kabyle.
What should you call a language in a situation like this? “Chenoua” takes a part for the whole, and as such is confusing, as well as privileging one group of speakers over others. “Kabyle” matches speakers’ traditional self-understanding, but misleads linguists, who are accustomed to using this for the much larger, not very closely related Berber variety spoken further west. “Western Algerian Berber” is potentially too broad; perhaps “Dahra Berber” is better, after the low-lying mountain range where most speakers live, but it presupposes a distinction from “Ouarsenis Berber” that is probably not linguistically justified.
But neither “Berber” nor the currently preferred term “Tamazight” correspond to traditional usage among speakers. “Berber” has never been used in any Berber variety; it has always been a term used by outsiders to label them, and in traditional coastal Algerian usage bǝṛbṛiyya actually referred to colloquial Arabic, not to Berber. And before the Amazigh identity movement gained ground in the late 20th century, most speakers in northern Algeria had never heard of “Tamazight”.
In contexts like this, it makes no sense for a linguist to insist on using the name speakers use. Folk categories simply don’t divide languages up at the same level as the one the linguists are interested in, nor for the same purposes. (In Bechar, šəlħa “Shilha” refers not only to several very different Berber varieties, but to the completely unrelated Songhay language Korandje). That doesn’t mean denying the validity of folk categories; people can call whales “fish” if they want to. It does mean making sure not to get misled by them.
It’s complicated! But it doesn’t answer the question it raises: what should we call this language variety?
[GEOGRAPHIC/POLITICAL ADJ] Kabyle. Compare Donegal (or Ulster) and Munster Irish = Gaeilge Thír Chonaill (Uladh) and Gaeilge na Mumhan. Alternatively Hackball (Hackballscross was a great source of mirth for my late mother–https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackballscross)
Call it what the speakers call it.
Simplez!
“Kabyle misleads linguists” – what tosh. How can a specialist (ie. a linguist) be misled on this?
What’s wrong with using “Haqbaylit” if “Kabyle” is too misleading?
Or calling it “[insert province name] Kabyle”
The speakers don’t think of it as a separate language to begin with. (Technically most of them don’t think of it as a language at all, having been convinced that only a codified written standard makes a language.) The word “Haqbaylit” doesn’t refer exclusively to this language in this language, any more than “Kabyle” does.
Having been to a fair number of Berber linguistics conferences, I rather think you’re underestimating the relevant specialists’ ability to be misled on this sort of thing; even talking about Berber as a language family rather than a language remains controversial. But even if we assume Berber linguists to be uniformly shrewd and well-informed about family-internal diversity, giving two quite different varieties the same name misleads a much more important audience – language policymakers. Textbooks that work in Tizi-Ouzou won’t fly in Tipasa.
What’s wrong with using “Haqbaylit” if “Kabyle” is too misleading?
I guess it’s technically distinct from “Taqbaylit” a.k.a. Kabyle proper…
One silly analogy that comes to mind is that it’s basically like if the confusion between Slovenščina and Slovenčina was resolved by renaming the latter “Tatran”.
…actually, considering the scale disparity, it might be more like if the confusion between Serbian and Sorbian was resolved by renaming the latter “Bautzer”.
Is this really so different from how things work in Western Europe? French and Spanish and Italian seem to be forms of the local names, but German and Dutch aren’t (and one might really refer to the other?)
As long as the speakers aren’t required to use an outsiders’ name while speaking the language, and as long as names aren’t based on insults*, it mostly seems to work out.
* Excepting Welsh?
Well, in Western Europe both speakers and linguists agree on what the languages are called, even if different names are used in different languages (no speaker of German is going to say “What do you mean, ‘German’? It’s deutsch!”). Even if some linguists and some speakers use “Chenoua,” other speakers have never heard of the term, and if Lameen says the situation is confusing I’m inclined to take his word for it.
As long as the speakers aren’t required to use an outsiders’ name while speaking the language, and as long as names aren’t based on insults, it mostly seems to work out.
Maybe the only thing Europeans haven’t fought about.
and as long as names aren’t based on insults
AFAIK the aforementioned Germans/Deutsche don’t seem to mind being also known as Niemcy…
No, that’s fair. And I don’t suppose it’s specific to Europe either. I think I was just pondering this not really being a ‘let us come in and tell you who you are’ issue but more a ubiquitous ‘communication is confusing and we can’t all be called “the people”‘ issue.
There must be other names which take the part for the whole – not that I’m recommending it as the ideal solution. England was kind of the whole at the time English was named. France has become the name for the whole. What else?
Aha, Moldavians especially.
Or if you need Western Europe, I think one can expect complications somewhere in Valencia.
And yes, linguists do agree that Low German is German. Just like Swiss German.
P.S. “using an outsiders’ name” issue arises immediately when you declare that a group of dialects variously referred to by thier speakers is one lanaguage whose name is “…..”.
You can be the government or a linguist or speaker of another related dialect, but you’re an outsider with respect to this group of speakers. In the case of Moldavian this is not even limited to one country (e.g. when Romanian government protests against existence of “Moldavian” schools in Ukraine).
Excepting Welsh?
I don’t think it’s an insult, except in the mouths of Germanic invaders who thought that everybody who was not themselves was inferior anyway, so that they would have taken all other ethnonyms as insulting. (Their spirit lives on the current Conservative Party.)
As far as I can make out, it originally meant “Roman”, pretty much. OK by me.
(And Cymro just seems to mean “fellow-countryman” etymologically, which is pretty uninspired. It’s only one step up from calling yourselves “The People”, in the indigenous American manner.
Sadly, our own name, The Pretty People, has been hijacked by the English. Only fair, as we stole it from the Picts anyway.
@Lameen
From what you’re saying, it seems that there is a strong analogy with “Chinese”. Yes?
Everything spoken in an Arab country is not a language:-)
Literary Arabic is a language.
Foreign lnaguages are languages.
Everything else is just what people speak.
‘communication is confusing and we can’t all be called “the people”‘
/chuckles quietly in judezmo, juhuri, dzhdi, yiddish, and the other yiddish/
>There must be other names which take the part for the whole
In English, Allemannic is a regional dialect, while in Spanish, Aleman is German.
My People are proud of NOT being Romans, but each to their own.
Well, the Germans usurped the people innit. So we have to make do with tribal and geographical designations.
I’m reminded of Turkey, which in Australia and the US is now officially called Türkiye at the bidding of President Erdogan – or must I now style him Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan?
I think it’s silly. How would it be if Australia asked Turkey to stop mocking us as Avustralya, or China to desist from their insular and offensive habit of referring to us as 澳大利亚 (Àodàlìyǎ)? It is not for any government to rule on what others will call their languages or their nations. Every naming has its historical, cultural, and linguistic determinants for those named, and divergent historical, cultural, and linguistic determinants for others. If something is genuinely offensive, that’s a different matter and we would do well to listen (for good reasons or faulty, we say Inuit not Eskimo); but that’s not what’s going on here.
Vanishingly few Australians (or USians, I warrant) could pronounce Türkiye the way Erdogan would wish as [ˈtyɾcije], even when shown that transcription. Half the presenters on Australian ABC media stress it on the penultimate and without anything resembling [ɾ]; and practically everyone ignores that un-English [y], along with the recherché subtleties of that [c].
I’m reminded also of Australia’s Beyond Blue, a worthy and accessible support for those suffering depression or anxiety. At its beginnings in 2000 a decree was issued that the name was always to be presented as one word in lower case and italics: beyondblue. I’m pleased to see that this absurdity has been quietly dropped (not before atrocities such as this in the journal literature; even they can’t bring themselves to italicise it, and the full PDF version has lead material all in italics, challenging the journal with ugly dilemmas). I was tempted to email them congratulations on their work but insisting that if they reply they must “spell” my name underlined and in 11.5 point Lucida Sans.
No one “owns” resources such as external punctuation, bold, italics, or underlining, even as applied to their names. An accepted exception, which arguably does belong to spelling rather than to punctuation, is hyphenation; but I’d bristle at anyone trying to foist an en dash on us when hyphenating with an already-hyphenated name: James Carrington–Clifford-Smith. I would also ignore any prescription to use or not use a period after an initial. If I’m following a style manual that omits these, too bad for the owner of the initials. And even CMOS (not C.M.O.S.) now prefers “US” to “U.S.” About time! But if they and all other US guides had held to “US”, anyone writing Rest-of-World English would be fully justified in sticking with “US”.
Also sprach Noetica.
Read: “But if they and all other US guides had held to “U.S.”, …”
There must be other names which take the part for the whole
In Kusaal, the word for “Moba” is Bim, which I was specifically told means “Moba” in general, and not just the Bemba subgroup that the Kusaal word presumably is based on. Likewise, Barig means “Bisa person” in general, not just a member of the Bareka subtribe.
Africa.
The city, the province, the continent.
(it used to be also the European name for Mahdia, the first Fatimid capital, in pre-colonial times. Now just a nice town, which perhaps would be larger if Spaniards did not demolish its city wall in the course of their clashes with Dragut. Presumbly totum pro parte but I still don’t know how that happened.).
I think it’s silly.
Of course, but the same is true of a large proportion of the things politicians say and do, whose relation to truth or good sense is irrelevant compared to the perceived effect on the voting public. I try to ignore as much of it as I can.
By the way, does anyone know how this Turgut Dragut happened?
WP:
Native name: Turgut Reis, “Torghoud”
Nickname(s): Dragut Rais, Darghouth
Arabic: درغوث
Italian: Dragura
P.S. I don’t know, maybe initially it was just a matter of succumbing to pressure (from China, etc.) but it seems now some English speakers think it is just the right (nice, polite) thing to do, to rename a country when a country requests this.
“If something is genuinely offensive, that’s a different matter” – the reason that Belarusians give for why using “Belorussia” and not “Belarus” in Russian is an insult to Belarusians is that “Belorussia” is not the official name of the country. I am quoting rather precisely what I heard many times.
Or maybe we just have stepped out of the world of traditions into the world of rebranding?
Hat:
I try to ignore as much of it as I can.
I generally ignore such edicts from politicians too. Most silly, and most relevant to my own daily concerns, is the surprising level of acquiescence when people are instructed to write “Türkiye” rather than “Turkey”, or “U.S.” or “beyondblue“.
I speak as a veteran of many weird contestations on Wikipedia talkpages. Ancient history for me, but one learns a lot from such a tour of duty. Recommended for anyone setting out on the editorial path. I note with relief that all five attempts to change the Turkey article to Türkiye or Turkiye have failed (see header material on that talkpage).
@Lameen, if it is policymakers who matter (if they matter at all), then what we are discussing here is not “the English name” but the name in use in Algeria.
That is, the endonym.
Greek. Canada (with degenerification).
Macedonia. The concept of. And the themes that have been. And the Krushevo Republic.
@Noetica: If I can write “UK” I don’t see why you can’t write “U.S.”
JC:
Of course I can write “U.S.”, and in some highly restricted circumstances I do. But tell me: could you with equanimity write “UK” and “U.S.” in the same sentence (apart from in a discussion of variant usages)? I couldn’t, even if a USian insisted on the dots. USians do not own punctuation, even with the abbreviated name of their country. Similarly, unless I were writing predominantly in French for a French readership I wouldn’t write “et tous les autres : sans exception”.
My college roommate subscribed to the USA Today, and at the time, their style guide enforced the use of USA as an adjective, as in “Three USA athletes win gold yesterday, on day two of the Olympics.”
I pity the copy editor who had to keep “correcting” reporters who surely refused to write it themselves.
But tell me: could you with equanimity write “UK” and “U.S.” in the same sentence (apart from in a discussion of variant usages)?
Certainly. When I learned that “UK” was the preferred endoacronym, I adopted it at once and forevermore. I don’t, however, go so far as to write “Mr. Biden” and “Mr Johnson”.
It’s possible the issue has been exaggerated in my memory. The closest I can find in the few vintage USA Today copies visible online is a reference to someone “who emigrated to the USA in 1968.” Mildly awkward, but not a full-on resident of downtown Awk like the perhaps apocryphal adjectival usage.
So JC, do you prefer U.S. or US? (Here I will forgo italics and quotes; meanings are clear without them.)
CMOS17 10.4: Periods with abbreviations presents two rules that together deliver the current dominant ruling in the United States on US versus U.S.:
If my task were to edit a portion of text that for some compelling reason used traditional state abbreviations, unless otherwise directed (by a publisher, say) I would in that context use U.S. There are few other situations in which I’d be happy to do so.
To use your term, U.S. and US are the same “endoacronym” (others might insist on “endoinitialism”), just styled differently. Similarly, these are all the same name (initials plus surname) but in various stylings:
Myself, I like the first least and the last most. So clean, so easy to read without error. But CMOS wants the first. None is “correct”, and it is not rational for an owner of that name to dictate which style a publication should use – any more than I should be successful in demanding underlined 1.5 point Lucida Sans whenever my name appears in published text. If editors are involved (as often they need to be), styling of any such kind is for them to settle, subject to the rules of the game they are playing.
and therefore
I think that therefore is nonsense. The two-letter state abbreviations were imposed by the USPS (no dots), and their style for countries is AUSTRALIA, with the exception of the United States where the style is to omit it. there is no earthly reason why states and countries should be treated identically. Note that in ISO 639 th abbreviation for the United Kingdom is GB, because (a) it has to be two letters, and (b) unless it would make the code too short, words like United and Kingdom are not used.
So clean, so easy to read without error.
So ambiguous (your favorite bugbear). “LT Kennedy” would be the abbreviation you’d prefer for Lucius Tintinnabulus Kennedy, but in USN (which I write “the U.S. Navy”) that is the abbreviation for “Lieutenant Kennedy”. In USA (which does not mean “the U.S.A.” here), there is no such rank, and he’d be 1LT Kennedy or 2LT Kennedy as the case may be.
By the same token, E. E. Cummings had >every right to object to editors who styled his name “e. e. cummings” (although book designers are another matter; they are free to write “andre malraux” n the cover, with neither capitals nor accent mark, if it suits their aesthetic), and it was up to the various descendants of Laurent de Camp to decide to spell their originally common surname “de Camp”, “De Camp”, “DeCamp”, or “Decamp”, and not up to some stylesheet-wielding editor. Similarly, Ulysses S Grant may or may not have preferred “S” to “S.”; my former colleague Barry F Margolius, who was in the same situation, always wrote his name without a period, though when the sign on his office door was made to read “F.”, he rationalized it by saying that “F.” was the abbreviation for “F”. Note that Chicago’s style “R. F. Kennedy” is consistent with their stated rules: his name is not “Robert Fitzgerald”, his names are “Robert” and “Fitzgerald”, each of which are abbreviated with single letters, which take a period.
Finally, for me CMOS may mean “Chicago Manual of Style”, but I generally abbreviate that to “Chicago”, as the primary meaning of CMOS is “complementary metal-oxide semiconductor”.
I have to throw in Breece D’J Pancake.
ISO 639: Who are you and what did you do with John Cowan? ISO 3166, I’m sure.
TIL I learned that the European Commission has laid its clammy hands on EL for Greece without reserving it in 3166. Bad style. (Admittedly, the likelihood that EL will be assigned to an entity participating in systems implementing the EU Customs Code is vanishingly small, but they also use it as a language code where it conforms to 639-1. Maybe they can’t tell the difference either, but in tax numbers it’s 3166 otherwise–DK and SE, not da and sv). At a guess, at least one member state will have had views on using a 3166 code based on the English name of the Hellenic Republic.
I write (especially in handwriting) ‘to 2 dp’ but ‘to 2 s.f’., although I have no idea WHY…
Who are you and what did you do with John Cowan? ISO 3166, I’m sure.
Of course. I may occasionally mess up purely numeric names (as with RFCs and their Scheme analogue SRFIs (Scheme Request for Implementation)), but I remember more substantive points, such as why it is that ISO 631 has Registration Authorities, like many ISO standards, but ISO 3166 has only a Maintenance Agency, namely that the ISO 3166 MA doesn’t decide what is or isn’t a country: that comes from the U.N. Statistical Agency and is based on economies, which is why Taiwan has a separate code, as do the various EU external territories. All the MA does is assign the alphabetic codes and deal with various kinds of reserved codes.
TIL I learned that the European Commission has laid its clammy hands on EL for Greece without reserving it in 3166.
Yes, EL really should be an exceptionally reserved code, like UK. Either the EC or Greece should request it, as I’m sure Greece doesn’t want any other country being coded as EL (which could happen otherwise). They just have to get off their posteriors and send a letter; I am sure the MA would grant exceptionally reserved status without thinking twice.
When I learned that “UK” was the preferred endoacronym, I adopted it at once and forevermore.
I find that strange bordering on nonsensical, unless it is a po-faced joke. “UK” is a style choice, not a “preferred endoacronym,” and I would be surprised if there were no British publications at all that used periods in such abbreviations. And it is absurd to think that Brits would take offense at its being written with periods in the same way that an inhabitant of Ukraine would take offense at “the Ukraine.” If you like omitting the periods, omit them in good health, but it’s not some sort of moral imperative. And to write “the UK and U.S.” out of some misplaced sense of political correctness would be batshit insane.
As the old proverb says, one man’s “strange bordering on nonsensical” is another man’s “This is Liberty Hall.”
One issue of course is whether you wish to be a human being communicating with other human beings or a servant of dumb-and-limited-bandwidth robots and databases. Using e.g. “Mass.” for Massachusetts carries an implicature of the former while using “MA” for ditto an implicature of the latter.
I have just sent the following email to ISO customer service:
Please forward the following to the ISO 3166 MA. Thank you.
I am writing to suggest that since the European Commission has been using the code EL for Greece since time immemorial, and is unlikely to shift to GR at this point or in future, that the code EL be exceptionally reserved. This would follow the pattern of the other anomalous EC code, namely UK, although UK has a corresponding top-level domain .uk and EL does not.
Please let me know if you are able to take this action and, if so, what further steps you plan to take.
As the old proverb says, one man’s “strange bordering on nonsensical” is another man’s “This is Liberty Hall.”
Fair enough! I don’t mind anyone punctuating however they like, but I bristle when it seems to be presented as something carrying more weight than a personal choice.
I don’t mind anyone punctuating however they like, but I bristle when it seems to be presented as something carrying more weight than a personal choice.
Them’s fighting words.
People often have preferences about how their names appear in print. Whether they should be accommodated may depend both on the nature of the preference and the context in which their name is to be printed. Someone legally named Albert Boris Cooper may have a meaningful preference as among e.g. the full name, Albert Cooper, Albert B. Cooper, A. Boris Cooper, Boris Cooper, Al Cooper, A.B. Cooper, A. B. (“Skip”) Cooper, Skip Cooper, etc. Perhaps “A. B.” versus “AB” and the other permutations is not something where the bearer’s wishes versus local stylebook dictates should be given much weight, but I would think it fair to give some presumptive weight to bearer preference as among those other alternatives (assuming you actually know the preference) unless there’s some good reason for stylistic uniformity or disambiguation that outweighs it.
Here’s a scan of a U.S. government technical publication from 1952 where genre conventions were thought to dictate reducing the names of all seven of the co-authors (including my grandfather) to the most impersonal option available (but with periods and intra-initial spacing, which I assume was GPO and/or G. P. O. stylebook* at the time). https://dggs.alaska.gov/webpubs/usbm/b/text/b510.pdf
*This link from which you may access the current and prior editions of that stylebook suggests that “GPO” is the currently-preferred form, but I haven’t investigated whether the convention was otherwise 70+ years ago. https://www.govinfo.gov/collection/gpo-style-manual
So ambiguous (your favorite bugbear)
I do wonder sometimes what the ch*rp was bell hooks thinking to decapitalize her name when that makes it look like a plausible sequence of two common nouns.
I suppose it works for a name like sarah-marie belcastro where at least it’s obviously a name in either casing…
People often have preferences about how their names appear in print.
Sure, but (as I have previously had occasion to maintain) cities, countries, corporations, and other legal entities are not people and do not deserve the generous consideration given to actual human beings. I’ll style the U.K. and PWC however I like, and a fig for their preferences.
JC:
I think that therefore is nonsense.
Much in CMOS is foolish, and I’m no advocate for it. But it does embody style preferences that dominate in the US.
So ambiguous (your favorite bugbear). “LT Kennedy” would be the abbreviation you’d prefer for Lucius Tintinnabulus Kennedy, but in USN (which I write “the U.S. Navy”) that is the abbreviation for “Lieutenant Kennedy”. In USA (which does not mean “the U.S.A.” here), there is no such rank, and he’d be 1LT Kennedy or 2LT Kennedy as the case may be.
(Responding to my preferred “RF Kennedy”, as opposed to CMOS-recommended “R. F. Kennedy”.) One can always adduce weird concocted examples that exhibit ambiguity. We got such captious objections with monotonous regulatory in the classic era of WP:MOS construction. It took much argument to resist the forces of folly and set sound robust principles in place. You yourself show a fine pair of confusables here: USA and U.S.A. (especially telling if “U.S.” is in play rather than “US”). In just about all contexts it would be perfectly clear whether a US Navy lieutenant was meant, or a person with the initials LT. In the exiguously few contexts where confusion is possible, one would fix it ad hoc. All part of the editor’s daily routine.
E. E. Cummings … de Camp etc.
Of course. Not relevant to the sorts of styling I was discussing though. (Note that CMOS calls for “Ulysses S. Grant”, with the dot.)
… his name is not “Robert Fitzgerald”, his names are “Robert” and “Fitzgerald”, each of which are abbreviated with single letters, which take a period.
Was there or is there a Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy? I know only Robert Francis Kennedy and Robert Francis Kennedy Jr.
… the primary meaning of CMOS is “complementary metal-oxide semiconductor”
No, context determines the meaning of such abbreviations. And given your readiness to adopt whatever the owner prefers, I would point out that the people at Chicago Manual of Style use “CMOS” (26 occurrences at that linked page) for the actual body of black-letter provisions and “Chicago” (a far more ambiguous term, away from context; 22 occurrences at that page) more loosely or in official unabbreviated naming.
Hat:
… cities, countries, corporations, and other legal entities are not people and do not deserve the generous consideration given to actual human beings.
Refreshing to see, as a counter to the pernicious absurdity of treating corporations as persons. (Not that I accept the notion of personhood as at all metaphysically respectable, mind.)
Was there or is there a Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy?
Not that I know of: a mere slip on my part.
Note that CMOS calls for “Ulysses S. Grant”, with the dot.
Explicitly so, or implicitly? If the “S” were an abbreviation of his middle name, it would be “S.” by Chicago rules, but it isn’t. Grant was christened Hiram Ulysses Grant and usually called Ulysses Grant, but when he was nominated for the U.S. Military Academy, he was incorrectly enrolled as “U. S. Grant” by the nominator, Representative Thomas L. Hamer. Apparently Hamer believed that his middle name was Simpson, his mother’s maiden name. Grant thought that if he protested, he would become known as “Hug”, and he preferred his Academy nickname of “Sam” (short for “Uncle Sam”).
Per contra, Harry S. Truman’s middle name is abbreviated, but it is not an abbreviation of a specific name: he was named after both his grandparents, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young. In any case there is no ambiguity in Barry’s name: his middle name is “F”, which is not an abbreviation and so requires and should receive no period.
Refreshing to see, as a counter to the pernicious absurdity of treating corporations as persons.
To allow that either corporations or persons have the right to be known by the names they choose does not mean treating one as the other. If it is absurd to call Joseph R. Biden “Frank”, it is just as absurd to call the University of Chicago “George”.
If you engage in the Etymological Fallacy and revert to thinking of “persona” as a stage mask concealing the true identity of the human(s) underneath, corporate personhood should not be a troubling concept. Cf. the vintage book (mid-Seventies?) by the late John Noonan titled _Persons and Masks of the Law_.
In semi-related news my 19-year-old is taking a college class this semester on early Church history where they are up to the various Christological controversies of the 5th century, so she called me at work about some stuff she was not entirely clear about and I ended up giving her the standard explanation about how the semi-fortuitous convention of treating Latin “persona” as the functional equivalent of ὑπόστασις, even though “substantia” would seem to be the natural calque, had confused many many people for many many centuries. I didn’t while we were still on the phone remember the Syriac word which likewise led to lots of people maybe talking past each other. Syriac is not one of my strong suits.
Separately, Robert Fitzgerald’s Aeneid translation is maybe not so good as certain uncritical fans of prior decades claimed, but it would be unfair to treat him as if he were a Kennedy.
The only Kennedy I know is a nice young lady and the only person in the observable universe who finds Russian easy. One can only be proud to bear her surname.
But she is from Scottish Kennedys. Maybe Irish Kennedys aren’t nice young ladies (and struggle with my language). I would not conclude that they are hopeless.
the semi-fortuitous convention of treating Latin “persona” as the functional equivalent of ὑπόστασις, even though “substantia” would seem to be the natural calque, had confused many many people for many many centuries.
What the hey ? It ain’t over yet as far as I’m concerned.
A learnèd link will suffice. This is not Hypostasis Hall.
JC:
Explicitly so, or implicitly? If the “S” were an abbreviation of his middle name, it would be “S.” by Chicago rules, but it isn’t.
Explicitly enough:
“General Ulysses S. Grant” is given in an example at 8.24: Military titles, and elsewhere also with the dot.
They would do the same with your Barry: Barry F. Margolius. Note that in my preferred way for initials + surname he would appear unproblematically as BF Margolius. But even in the more common CMOS way, wouldn’t just about everyone want it to be B. F. Margolius? We can simply think of an initial as the first letter of a word (even of a one-letter word) that is to be followed in some styling with a period and not so followed in other styling. If a style manual wanted U.S., P.W.C., A.W.O.L., and H.M.A.S. it would be strange for it to want IO.U or the like (the U is independently difficult), would it not?
To allow that either corporations or persons have the right to be known by the names they choose does not mean treating one as the other.
Agreed. And for what it’s worth, I would be happier to accord a “human person” the ontological status of corporation (quite broadly construed) than to accord a corporation (narrowly construed) the problematic status of person.
By the way, concerning LT as an abbreviated form for Lieutenant this CMOS provision is relevant:
So with CMOS style, in LT Parsons the LT should even without context be read as initials; LT Sebastian Parsons could be mentioned as LT S Parsons, but not as LT Parsons.
@JWB, now I wonder where the modern Russian formulation (“one in three faces”) comes from.
To allow that either corporations or persons have the right to be known by the names they choose does not mean treating one as the other.
A strange sentence; dog does not mean ‘cat’ — so what? Are you under the impression that we call a person by the name they choose because of some rule in a manual of style? No, we do that because people, human beings, deserve the dignity of having their preferences taken into account and (if it does not cause other problems) acceded to, because to call Fred “boy” (to take an example plucked from the American annals) is inherently demeaning: it says “You are not worth my taking your humanity and individuality into account.” Corporations are not people. They are not human beings. This is not a matter of law or usage or Supreme Court decisions, it is a simple fact. Corporations are not born, they are created by filing papers; they do not die, they are dissolved; and they have neither feelings nor dignity. A corporation does not give a shit what you call it. A corporation’s lawyers can sue you if you call them something they feel is (or might be considered by a friendly court) defamatory, but that is an entirely different matter; calling someone by their chosen name because you don’t want to cause them pain is utterly different from using a corporation’s chosen abbreviation (or whatever) because you’re afraid of being sued. I can’t believe this is so hard to understand that I have to spell it out.
I repeat: corporations are not human beings. To treat them as if they were is madness.
To work our way back to the original theme of the post, it would seem to follow from the Hattic logic that communities that speak given language varieties “are not human beings” (since like the groups of human beings that make up corporations they are generally plural). So no need to give any weight whatsoever to the endonym for the language variety. Problem solved!
The communities that speak given language varieties are made up of human beings who care about what you call them, unlike the shareholders of corporations, who only care about their profits. But of course it’s true that most of them are unlikely to care much about what you call their language (unless stirred up by rabblerousing politicians), as opposed to what you call them personally, so it’s not as pressing a problem. Different things are different.
Every American English style guide that I have consulted on the question of single-letter given names* says basically the same thing, although not always in a concise or orderly way. The rule is to use a period, treating the letter as an initial (of itself), unless the bearer is known to prefer no period. And in my experience, both with people I have known or interviewed and historical persons I have read about, very few people with a single-letter name actually care one way or the other about the punctuation.
* Single-letter surnames (which are uncommon, but are not limited to Rollerball either) are obviously a different case. The circumstances under which surnames are likely to be abbreviated are quite different, and I don’t know if any style guide that had published recommendations for how to punctuate single-letter last named on kindergartners’ name tags
Rogelio Ramírez de la O.
But we are speaking about the name which will be used in Algeria.
Companies are presumably also made up of human beings who (potentially) care what you call them, and the number of companies consisting of one or two individuals must vastly outnumber those consisting of faceless thousands.
Well, if there’s one or two individuals who have a company and say they care about its being misnamed, I’ll listen, if they’re polite about it. As you can probably guess, I’m talking about massive international companies, which are the only ones likely to be much talked about.
The circumstances under which surnames are likely to be abbreviated are quite different, and I don’t know if any style guide that had published recommendations for how to punctuate single-letter last named on kindergartners’ name tags
Maybe the issue is addressed in the style guide of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I had thought hat upthread was willfully defying the branding preference of the “PwC” worldwide network of accounting-etc. firms by calling it allcaps “PWC.” Like a lot of such firms, the initials represent the surnames of three once-prominent-but-now-deceased fellows from the firm’s predecessors. The lowercase “w” does seem disrespectful to the memory of Mr. W., but he died in 1917. And of course since PwC is the result of a merger between PW and C & L, Mr. “w.” fared better than the late Mr. L, who disappeared like a former Politburo member being airbrushed out of a photo.
I had thought hat upthread was willfully defying the branding preference of the “PwC” worldwide network of accounting-etc. firms by calling it allcaps “PWC.”
I was indeed! And your points about airbrushing are well taken.
The cricket term lbw (leg before wicket) appears to never take periods.
The German abbreviation corresponding to “etc” , namely usw (und so weiter), can (according to Authorities) be written u.s.w. However, my perceived feeling is that the period-laden form is uncommon in contemporary texts. I may have seen it occasionally in older books (from the 19C backwards).
When I said that a Rusyn woman who called her language “kitchen Russian” was not incorrect, LH assumed that I’m saying so because I support Putin’s imperialism and said that she made a grammatical error.
I don’t think the Algerian government is less politicised and less willing to tell a member of a minority group who uses a name different from what government prefers for her group or her language that she is making a grammatical error.
So we are discussing not how “we” will call Chenoua, but the name we will impose on speakers.
One can find instances of “L.B.W.” if you look over a long-enough time frame. For example, an apparently humorously-intended story from a circa 1920 magazine article about the fictitious Ladies Cricket League of Blankshire asserts that the rule “will have to be altered from L.B.W. to S.B.W.” (The latter of course standing for “skirt before wicket.”) Perhaps usage and/or the stylesheets of periodicals that talk about cricket have become more uniform as time has gone on. I have a suspicion that widespread UK stylebook hostility to periods in abbreviations in general became more acute over the course of the 20th century, but that’s of course an empirical question that would require careful study of evidence and I don’t have the time to spare myself.
This prescriptivist-looking thing claims that all-lower-case German abbreviations do have a period, but only a single one at the end, so “usw.” rather than either “usw” or “u.s.w.” Whereas “z.B.” by contrast gets a period after each letter. https://www.studygermanonline.com/blog/the-10-most-important-german-abbreviations-zb-ca-bzw
I was certainly taught (prescriptively, in a U.S. public school) to do “z.B.” that way but I lack a clear recollection of how we were taught to do the other one and haven’t been sufficiently exposed to enough German texts in recent years to have a decent impression of actual current usage.
When I said that a Rusyn woman who called her language “kitchen Russian” was not incorrect, LH assumed that I’m saying so because I support Putin’s imperialism and said that she made a grammatical error.
Huh? The only LH thread I can find with “kitchen Russian” is this one; you mentioned it here, and I never responded that I can see. I don’t remember thinking anything negative about what you said and later thanked you for another comment. If I ever accused you of supporting Putin’s imperialism (which I don’t remember doing, but that doesn’t mean anything), I apologize.
A learnèd link will suffice. This is not Hypostasis Hall.
Well, Somebody didn’t catch my request, so I trudged my lonely way to that fount of all wisdom: Hypostasis (philosophy and religion).
Warning: you may leave the site as wise as you entered it. It contains an abundance of ousia-wousia and a definitive assessment by Basil of Caesarea.
A corporation does not give a shit what you call it. A corporation’s lawyers can sue you if you call them something they feel is (or might be considered by a friendly court) defamatory, but that is an entirely different matter; calling someone by their chosen name because you don’t want to cause them pain is utterly different from using a corporation’s chosen abbreviation (or whatever) because you’re afraid of being sued.
You call a bully Sir or Mr. Jones instead of Asshole! not because he deserves your respect but because you’re afraid he’ll punch you out or fire you. You called Yahoo! Inc. by that (stupid) name in your editorial copy, back when Yahoo mattered, because you didn’t want them to stop advertising with you or otherwise counterpunch. Undoubtedly every copy editor in the tech press shuddered every time they had to enforce that rule, but the Will of the Bosses is strong in the Force. Each thing is just like the other.
Each thing is just like the other.
I learned from Sesame Street that one of these things is not like the others. Now I don’t know what to believe.
Yahoo! Inc.
Spiky words in your comment, JC. All I can say usefully about Yahoo is that they made dreadful decisions in their style guide (not available online any more I think, but I own a print copy), and did not follow their own guidance in that guide. Amateurs.
Perplexed:
I learned from Sesame Street that one of these things is not like the others.
Whereas in fact all things are different except one. We may not know which thing that is; but it must exist because if it didn’t we’d have nothing to contrast the notion of difference with and it would melt into meaninglessness. I hope that helps.
” If I ever accused you of supporting Putin’s imperialism (which I don’t remember doing, but that doesn’t mean anything), I apologize.”
LH, I am suprised. And I think I must apologise. No, you did not.
Though I actually remembered that you interpreted my words so and thus I am glad that I now have an excuse to re-read it and find that I’m wrong:)
You called Yahoo! Inc. by that (stupid) name in your editorial copy, back when Yahoo mattered
Speak for yourself. I never did any such thing. And in general, what you are talking about is not what I was talking about.
@LH, you said: “If you wish to buy into Putin’s narrative that anyone with any historical connection to any lands that have ever been considered Rus(sia) is Russian.”
I disagree, but you did not attribute the wish “to buy into Putin’s narrative” to me.
Mostly I think that a speaker can call her language however she wants. If it creates confusion, then we first should listen to her reasons and discuss the situation with her.
It is better to avoid the situation where the Algerian name for Chenoua is chosen by people who don’t speak Chenoua, and then Chenoua speakers say they speak Kabyle, and we say “no, you don’t, it is people of Tizi-Ouzou who speak Kabyle, you speak Chenoua and you mistakenly call it Kabyle because your Arabic is bad and you are ignorant” .
Yes, I agree.
It appears that I was the alleged crypto-Putinite in that old thread, although as should have been obvious my interest is in a broad sense of Rus’-ness that need not and perhaps ought not be Muscovy-centric.
Is this the wrong historical moment for anyone to advocate for the independent Rusyn/Carpatho-Russian/etc . state that was never quite feasible in earlier generations? Their Ukrainian overlords are currently preoccupied with military threats elsewhere, and maybe the current allegedly-dodgy governments of Hungary and Slovakia would want to help them out?
@Y “Maybe the only thing Europeans haven’t fought about.”
Look into the glottonyms español versus castellano in recent years in Spain; and in Yugoslavia and former Yugoslavia the glottonyms (I give English translations here) ‘Serbo-Croatian’ versus ‘Serbian’ and ‘Croatian’, later, ‘Serbian’ versus ‘Croatian’ versus ‘Bosnian’, and still later, ‘Serbian’ versus ‘Croatian’ versus ‘Bosnian’ versus ‘Montenegrin’.
“I must be frank.”
– Emperor “Frank” Palpatine
Some do, some don’t, most probably prefer to evade the question.
Ha! Not only is Grant the US personified, he’s Uncle Sam, too?
My perceived feeling is that abbreviations without spaces after their periods are wrong, wrong, wrong in German, and indeed rarely found. But Microsoft’s spellchecker allows them…
I think that ship has sailed; in particular there’s no way to draw a line.
Orbán would only support cashiering the whole area. Fico, I think, only cares about money.
Well, I just mean, linguists use the name and the situation here is also confusing.
It’s the sort of confusion referred to in Lameen’s post (the relationship between names and groupings) but not the type referred to by LH…
P.S.I mean”:
“German” is an established English name, familiar to German speakers, right?
ying yu is an established name for “English langauge” unfamiliar to English speakers.
Chenoua is not an established “French” name.
Laoust has Etude sur le dialecte du Chenoua comparé avec des beni-menacer et des beni-salah (where Chenoua is an area). I don’t know if it was a conscious decision by a scholar to extend “le dialecte du Chenoua” to “le dialecte … des beni-menacer” or just an aberration.
Meanwhile some speakers clearly know French and Arabic. They hear how local Arabic speakers refer to their language. Perhaps some even refer to their langauge in French, somehow. And I suspect most simply never took part in a conversation where foreigners discuss their variety in a foreign language.