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Archive 1

Native north americans and other natives overshadowed by colonizers

I wanted to know the naming conventions of Ojibwa people or at least an approximated generalization... But I've found nothing... No one boards that subject... And it's missing! 200.106.40.22 03:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Something

Does anyone have any more information about naming in other, less west European, cultures that they could add? We need some information on naming conventions in Arabic and probably China and Japan as well, as a minimum.

There is already some fairly good material at Arabic name, Chinese name, Japanese name, etc. that can be condensed into something presentable for this article (although the Chinese name article probably needs to make it a little clearer about some of the differences between the naming traditions Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and perhaps some mild POV editing). Where we really need some better info is on African nameing traditions, and Jewish names, as well as for First Nation and Native American naming traditions, etc. There are also areas of the world where single names are common (Afganistan, Indonesia, etc.) which needs to be covered. There was also an interesting article in the LA Times this last month about names and genealogy in Mongolia that had info that would be interesting to include. The more I think about it there are areas that I know nothing about the naming traditions: Australian Aborigines and Maori, South American natives plus the Aztecs and Mayans, Pacific Islanders and Hawaiians, and the list goes on. And then the discussion on Patronymic needs lots of work, both here and in the main article. [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 15:52, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Compulsory Family Names in Europe?

re: "Family name: Compulsory in the West, at least for past 300 years or so." This is incorrect. In looking information up at the LDS genealogical website in their country Research Outlines I found the following info: [1]

For Denmark: From around 1850 on, city-dwelling Danes started taking permanent surnames, but it wasn't until 1875 that rural Danes followed suit. It wasn't until 1904 that a national law required people to adopt permanent family names.

For Sweden: In 1901 a law required people to adopt permanent surnames to be passed onto successive generations.

For Norway: After about 1850, it became the custom in the cities to take permanent surnames. By 1900 most of Norway began doing so. In some places, the patronymic naming customs continued until 1923, when a law was passed requiring persons to adopt permanent family names to be passed to successive generations.

For Germany: most people had adopted surnames by the 1500's, but patronymics continued in some areas until various different states adopted decrees requiring permanent surnames between 1771 and 1820.

For Wales: Most nobles adoped surnames by the 16th century, and gentry during the 18th, but farmers and workers did not take surnames until the 19th century or later.

For France: Surnames were first used by the nobility and wealthy land owners. Later the custom was followed by merchants and townspeople and eventually by the rural population. This process took two or three centuries. In France, the practice was well established by the 1200s. Since 1539 the law that required priests to write baptism registers also required them to write the surname next to the baptismal name. Jewish Naming Customs. Before 1808, the use of a family name by Jews was left to the discretion of the individual. Most Jews in France followed the custom of using only a given name and the father's name, such as Isaac, son of Abraham. Occasionally the name of the town where the person lived was used, as in Isaac of Metz. Most Jews did not adopt hereditary family names until required to do so by law. In 1808 Napoleon made Jews take a fixed surname.

[some of the above info will need to be rewritten to use in the Wikipedia because it is copyrighted material.] [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 09:50, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Name order

The text in the "Name order" section was confusing. It is now much shorter and hopefully less confusing. However, some information is still lacking:

  • It ought to say that the capital-letters convention is used by writers from both ordering conventions, but I was not able to say that in a clear fashion. (It can be used to disambiguate a name for a global audience, no matter what its native order is.)
  • Some discussion of the relative prevalence of this convention would be nice; also of how common it is to swap name order for an audience from the other convention.
  • Is there an equivalent convention when transliterating from Latin alphabet to e.g. katakana (which does not have two cases)?

Zack

I've only ever seen the all-capitals for last name convention in scientific literature, but I assume that the convention is used in some non-English languages since I know that there are couple of the non-English Wikipedias that use it (the Esperanto Wiki I think is one of them). [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 06:30, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Can anyone tell me why some cultures place their family name before their given name and vice versa. and maybe somebody can give a link for this too.--Janarius 16:00, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Birthplace names

Is there an official word for 'birthplace names'? These are especially common in Arab cultures, e.g. Saddam Hussein's "full" name is Saddām Hussein `Abd al-Majid al-Tikrītī — the al-Tikrītī bit refers to his place of birth, the district of Tikrit. I would suggest "geonym" or "polinym", but those are wild guesses. Any help? -- FirstPrinciples 00:58, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

There is already an article on Arabic name, which specifically mentions Saddam Hussein's full name, but suggests that suggest that the use of place names is a minor tradition within the Arabic naming tradition. If you know more about Arabic name, you might add that information to the Arabic name article. There are also quite a few European last names that are based upon place names. BlankVerse 08:38, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
No kidding :) My question was, do the "birthplace names" themselves have a specific name (e.g. I speculate "polinym" from the Greek, poli [town] + nym [name]). The reference to Arabic names and Saddam Hussein was just there to elaborate the question. -- FirstPrinciples 12:16, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
You're thinking of bynames, but there's no article on that yet. The 'by' is from the word for 'town' in the scandinavian languages — KayEss | talk 08:23, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Actually, it's not. A byname is a nickname, or surname, and the 'by' part of the word has the sense of 'beside' or 'secondary'. It is also found in such words as by-blow, by-catch, ... bypath, by-road, by-play, byway, etc, etc. Eilthireach 18:58, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Duplication

There's a certain amount of unnecessary duplication of information between this article and Given name and Family name, e.g. about name order and name origins. Anyone feel like cleaning it up? Ben Finn 10:09, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Cultures without individual names?

I seem to recall from Antrhopology courses that there do exist (or have existed) cultures in which individuals do not have names. Perhaps they have a name that is shared among a small group of individuals (such as close kin) within a larger group, or similar idea. Am I mistaken? Thanks! --NightMonkey 02:50, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree. It seems highly questionable that personal given names are "universal", as this article claims. For example, the article on Roman naming conventions indicates that through most of recorded Roman history, Roman women had no given names at all: a single daughter of the Octavius family would simply be called Octavia, while if there were two daughters they would be Octavia Minor and Octavia Maior. Furthermore, male Romans had praenomina which are sort of like given names... except that they were chosen from an extremely restricted set of only 20-40 possibilities. Moxfyre 21:40, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

In the reference to Anonyms what is the purpose of bolding Anonym?, the section seems to differentiate between a person who avoids giving a name and one who uses a pseudonym, however anonym just redirects to pseudonym. Should there be a seperate article regarding anonyms? Would persons who have no name, either by choice or circumstance, be included in the group anonyms? --Withamk@usa.net 07:10, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Taking additional middle names

I have heard that Anglican Priests have traditionally taken an extra middle name at the time of their ordination. Can anyone confirm that? --Gw russell 21:01, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Nonhuman names - relevant?

What is the point of including a section about names of nonhumans in an article titled "Personal name"? Particularly the detailed paragraphs about the two horses in Romans of the Three Kingdoms... Totally irrelevant. --supernorton 01:27, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Child-rights convention

The ref to Convention on the Rights of the Child is little more than PR for that institution, in light of that article's, uh, extensive coverage of enforcement. (The term the author is looking for is "in force", not "enforced", BTW; two barely related concepts.) I found

According to Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, enforced as of 1990, every child has a right to a name.[1]

and i'm leaving

The Convention on the Rights of the Child endorses personal names as a human right.[2]

which is the NPoV version of as much as the article or talk on the convention says is in it. More could perhaps be encyclopedically said about the convention and personal names, but in that article, not this one.
--Jerzy•t 22:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Feudal Names

Just wondering if there was any justification for 1) the use of small caps for "Lafayette" and "Quixote" and 2) the comment that the title of the musical comedy is "the disgusting phrase".

Not having seen the comedy, I can't really comment on the quality of it, but I don't know if that comment is particularly relevant. And the oddness of formatting with small caps just seemed a bit confusing. If no one has any strong objections, I'll clean those up in a week or so. Datsun Eleven 23:59, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

You misread it; it says "disguising", not "disgusting". As for the small caps, that's just an illustration of the convention which it's talking about. I don't see anything wrong with that. Hairy Dude 00:20, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Cultural Conventions Section

I suggest that the section discussing the different naming traditions and conventions in various cultures should have its own section. It is not really pertitent to the structure of a name where it is listed now. Ngaskill 22:46, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Teller's name

There is a claim that Teller's name was legally changed to a single name, including on his passport. The Wikipedia article on Teller makes this claim, as do other articles. The only support for this claim is a reference to a comedy website. Is there any acual evidence of the single name on the passport? Are we to take a joke website advertising a comedy team as an encyclopedic source? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.68.134.1 (talk) 20:57, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

First sentence - middle name - young age

The term "middle name" seems somewhat Western/Eurocentric. There are plenty of cultures where people have only 2 names (or one, or many, in all sorts of different orders, and that's just for starters). Second, some names (see Burmese names) are given at any point in adulthood. Suggested rewrite:

"A personal name (often called full name) typically comprises an individual's given name (bestowed at birth or at a young age) plus their middle name(s) and family name (surname)." -> "A personal name (often called full name) typically, but not always, comprises an individual's given name or names (bestowed at birth or at a later age) and often a family name." Huseyx2 (talk) 22:33, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Strangely Ethnocentric

A substantial number of people do not have patronymics, matronymics or family names and many have a variable number of name components. The Indonesian president for example, but the examplar for his class of people is apparently an American comedian with NFN as a kind of administrative first name. 124.188.147.73 (talk) 09:45, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the cases of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Teller are different. The first was born without a surname and adopted one, and the second was born with a first name and abandoned it. I wouldn't call this ethnocentric, although the target audience is native English speakers. Tinynanorobots (talk) 21:21, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

African use of eastern name order

In the name order section of this article, it's claimed that besides Hungary and the Far East, some African countries and/or cultures also use the eastern name order. I'm just curious as to what cultures use it, since I have yet to encounter any African who uses that name order. Can anybody give examples of cultures that do? Nederbörd (talk) 22:35, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a source to cite, but from personal experience Rwandan naming convention usually uses names that can appear in different orders depending on the context. For example, the president of Rwanda is called Paul Kagame, but is often referred to as Kagame Paul as well (especially in formal or official settings). However this isn't exactly the same as Eastern naming convention, because most Rwandans do not use a family name or a patronymic. Usually they are given a religious (or secular Western) name such as John, Muhammad, or Leonard, followed by a traditional Kinyarwanda name such as Mugisha, Keza, or Habayimana. 41.186.78.91 (talk) 20:16, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm also sceptical about this, I've been researching a list to use as part of a name coding program and none of the African countries seem to use this order. 73.172.12.116 (talk) 22:52, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Sentence fragment

It is nearly universal for a human to have a name; feral children growing up in isolation, or infants orphaned by natural disaster of whom no written record survives.

The second half, after the semicolon, seems to be an incomplete, fragmented sentence. Masterius2011 (talk) 04:42, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Romania

Is it true that in Romania the official order is surname - given name? It may be like in italy where the official order is given name - surname but, for bureaucratic influence, many people tend to use the order surname - given name (although not considered correct).--Carnby (talk) 15:35, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Brazilian "Middle" Names

What is written about Brazilian names in the introduction is not correct at all or - at best - is overly, yet still incorrectly, simplified to couch Brazilian naming standards within American naming convention. A Brazilian has one (or more) first names, followed by their mother's "maiden name" (the maternal grandfather's father's father's [ad nauseum] last name) and the father's father's [ad nauseum] last name.

So, if a hypothetical mother's name is Rosana di Paolo Tanaka and the father's name is Nelson Kowalski Rodrigues, their hypothetical children's full names might be Vaneusa Tanaka Rodrigues and Pedro Enrique Tanaka Rodrigues.

Tanaka is not a middle name in the American sense, it's part of the legal last name, coming from Rosana's father (maternal grandfather of the kids). If anything might be considered a "middle name" in the American sense it might be "Enrique" for the male child, though the Brazilian view would neither see it nor treat it in that sense for documentation or other purposes. Rather, his first name would be "Pedro Enrique" and his last names are Tanaka Rodrigues. When our hypothetical Vaneusa has children with a man named, say, "Stanislaus Carvalho Zimmerstein" their son might be named, João Rodrigues Zimmerstein.

66.176.113.94 (talk) 19:14, 29 January 2014 (UTC)Tom in South Florida

Possible move of this article being discussed

The possibility of moving this article to a different name is being discussed at WT:WikiProject Anthroponymy#"Personal name" versus "given name". Jc3s5h (talk) 11:52, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

We are using two different definitions of "personal name" in the lede alone

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy#So... what is the meaning of "personal name"? for details... In a nutshell, our lede has "A personal name or full name refers to the set of names by which an individual is known..." and then later in the lede says In Western culture, nearly all individuals possess at least one given name (also known as a personal name, first name, forename, or Christian name), together with a surname ..." emphasis added.

My research seems to show that "personal name" has three meanings: 1) full name, 2) only the first name, and 3) each term in the name (that is, "John Jacob Smith" has three personal names). I propose to edit the lede to that effect, absent counsel otherwise. Herostratus (talk) 04:09, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 8 November 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. Several editors suggested that there could be some restructuring of this and other related articles. That idea might merit further discussion, but at this time there is no consensus for the proposed renaming of this article as it currently stands. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:42, 23 November 2016 (UTC)


Personal name → Full name – Less confusion with given name which is sometimes also referred to as personal name. Glovacki (talk) 12:11, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

  • Research required. The article does not offer any citations to reliable sources to establish that "personal name" or "full name" mean what the article says they mean. I suggest finding reliable sources to establish what terminology is correct, then decide what, if anything, to do about the article title. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:21, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
  • Strong support: per WP:SUPRISE, I don't understand how this article has stayed at this current title for so long! Personal name definitely sounds like a synonym for given name, as in it is the personal part of one's name, as opposed to the shared element such as surname. I understand that such a justification may not apply universally to all cultures however 'full name' is unambiguous. If someone asks you to "state your full name" you write your whole name down, if someone were to ask for my personal name I would think they meant my first name or even a nickname. It's also worth noting that the first line of given name states " given name (also known as a personal name, Christian name, first name, or forename) reaffirming my point that the current title of this article is at best ambigous and at worst just plain incorrect. Ebonelm (talk) 23:38, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment Oppose Well, the article is titled "Personal name" as it's a rather general one about names of persons (in contrast to other things, like places). Wouldn't "Full name" imply a narrower scope? – Uanfala (talk) 11:25, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
    • Changing to "oppose": renaming the article could be an option only if there's some topic restructuring. At present the article is about the naming of people and the different naming systems there are out there in the world. A "full name" is merely one culture-specific way of selecting/arranging personal names. If there's any ambiguity, I'd support a move to Personal naming or something similar. – Uanfala (talk) 22:37, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
@Uanfala, I fail to see your reasoing why do you think that 'full name' is culturally specific? And which culture do you think this is specific to? An article on full names would still retain all the information about name ordering which is currently has. Western names tend to follow given name then surname, while Asian names tend to follow the rule of surname first then given name, etc. In both my examples those are still full names, and so both would still be explained in this article (as would the many other name ordering forms). I fail to see how a change in title to 'full name' would stop the article carrying out this explanatory function. Ebonelm (talk) 16:24, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Ebonelm, I can't imagine opening an anthropology journal and finding a paper entitled "Full names among the Ugabuga". The concept of "full name" implies that an individual has several names and that there is a practice of using these names in a certain sequence in order to identify/refer to this individual in a certain context. This is not a universal. And even in the cultures where it's used, it doesn't cover the whole scope of anthroponymy. Take nicknames for example, they aren't normally considered part of the full name, are they? But the article has to cover them as well. At any rate, I support choosing a less ambiguous title, but not at the cost of narrowing the scope. – Uanfala (talk) 18:23, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Put another way, "personal name" is narrower than we'd like, and implies the exclusion of family names. "Full name" has the opposite problem, and is too broad, implying subject matter far beyond people. Neither is as good a title as I'd wish for, but I think the former is less bad. It's easier to explain (and makes more sense) that we're interpreting it in the broader sense than to justify limiting "Full name" to people. 71.41.210.146 (talk) 20:40, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.


Requested move 25 November 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: NO CONSENSUS —UY Scuti Talk 16:01, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Personal name → Personal naming – Prevent confusion with "given name". As discussed before "full name" is too ambiguous, but still we need to do something with current name of the article. User:Uanfala suggested Personal naming, I think that it would be good choice. Glovacki (talk) 08:48, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

diffuse into meaninglessness

when a plurality of names occur, some are specific to the individual, distinguishing them from related individuals (e.g., John Adams and John Quincy Adams), while other names indicate the person's relationship to or membership in a family, clan, or other social structure (as for Charles Philip Arthur George and one of his namesakes), or even to unrelated others (e.g., as for Leonardo DiCaprio and his namesake).

Chuck's names include Philip because of his father, but one has no way of knowing, from the name alone, which (if any) is his father's; and so it does not indicate anything. And what relationship between the actor and the painter is indicated by their shared name?

Why doesn't this sentence explicitly contrast given names to family names? —Tamfang (talk) 00:39, 14 April 2017 (UTC)


Polynesian culture; Object/Concept naming

There is no citation that I can find for the line about needing to rename a object/concept after a member of leadership bearing that name has died. I am also looking for a term that describes the given name based on stereotypical Native American "Sitting Bull" style after objects/concepts. 72.182.148.220 (talk) 17:00, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

  1. ^ Text of the Convention on the Rights of the Child
  2. ^ Text of the Convention on the Rights of the Child
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