{"id":10669,"date":"2013-02-01T09:48:28","date_gmt":"2013-02-01T08:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=10669"},"modified":"2013-02-04T12:27:17","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T11:27:17","slug":"naming-children-in-iceland-and-around-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=10669","title":{"rendered":"Naming children in Iceland &#8211; and around the world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m fascinated by naming practices around the world which differ far more than you might imagine.<\/p>\n<p>So I was interested this week to see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-europe-21280101\">a news item<\/a> about how a girl in Iceland had had to go to court to win the right to use the first name given to her by her mother:\u00a0Blaer &#8211; which means &#8220;light breeze&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So many of the implicit assumptions that citizens of the English-speaking nations make about names in other countries are simply wrong:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It is assumed that the meaning of names is unknown and unimportant &#8211; but (virtually) all names have meaning if only we knew it and, in many, many cultures, names are chosen precisely because of their meaning.<\/li>\n<li>It is assumed that given names are gender-specific &#8211; but many African and all Chinese given names can be applied to boys and girls.<\/li>\n<li>It is assumed that, when someone has more than one given name, the first is the one used in everyday life &#8211; but in Germany it is the second or the given name nearest the family name that is the &#8216;call name&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li>It is assumed that people have a single family name &#8211; but, in Spain and Portugal, they have two.<\/li>\n<li>It is assumed that people take their family name from their father &#8211; but girls in Iceland take their family name from their mother.<\/li>\n<li>It is assumed that family names are not gender-specific &#8211; but,\u00a0in most Slavonic countries, family names ending\u00a0with &#8216;-ov&#8217; and &#8216;-in&#8217; add an &#8216;a&#8217; in their female form and Polish and Lithuanian\u00a0have their own endings for female last names.<\/li>\n<li>It is assumed that given names come first and family names come last &#8211; but the reverse is the case in countries like China, Japan, Vietnam and even Hungary.<\/li>\n<li>It is assumed that all countries have family names as well as first names &#8211; but Burma and large parts of India do not have family names.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You will find my comprehensive review of naming practices around the world <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/useofnames.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m fascinated by naming practices around the world which differ far more than you might imagine. So I was interested this week to see a news item about how a girl in Iceland had had to go to court to win the right to use the first name given to her by her mother:\u00a0Blaer &#8211; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10669"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10700,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10669\/revisions\/10700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}