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From: thed@mundil.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Paul Benjamin DWERRYHOUSE)
Subject: Re: Pronouncing your name in another language
Message-ID: <9501423.14645@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>
Sender: news@cs.mu.OZ.AU (-)
Organization: Department of Computer Sci, University of Melbourne
References: <J8yYBWU.padrote@delphi.com> <moose-1101951036570001@pacsci-28.pacsci.org> <3f5tif$l5o@nic.umass.edu>
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 1995 12:16:10 GMT
Lines: 60

In article <3f5tif$l5o@nic.umass.edu> smailer@twain.oit.umass.edu (Ira Smailer) writes:

>Take a look at my name. Seems like no problem, huh? And yet, if you use
>ordinary rules of English pronunciation, you will have got neither
>my first nor my last name right. Moreover, if you call me that, I won't
>hear you, because I only react to my own name. Of course, it was a
>bit hard to convince my teachers in school that I *was* paying attention,
>and not day-dreaming or something...
>
>I think one should try to use the correct (local) pronunciation whenever
>possible, and especially when speaking with a person from that country.
>For example, old transliterations of "Beijing" are "Peking", and even
>I cringe when I hear that, even though I'm not Chinese.

When I was being taught German, my teacher always said that people's names were
sacred. You shouldn't even think about translating them when addressing or 
referring to them. Perfectly logical and, more importantly, very good manners!

But I'm inclined to think that the names of towns and countries are fair
game for translation (when required), if for no other reason than differences
between native and foreign names for any given place are simply due to 
that being the word for the place in one's language! (That was very badly 
put, but I had much trouble with it. Ie. Prague is simply the English word
for Praha, for example).

On a similar note, I have no problem with German speakers referring to
Australia as 'Australien', if it fits their language better, so be it.

What does interest me, though, is the origins of some of these names.

For example,
		Deutschland
		in English: Germany       
		in French:  Allemagne
		and in Czech: something like 'Nemecky'  (can't remember exactly)

These all seem so very different to Deutschland. Where did they originate?
(I realise that English went vaguely wrong with the people that they call
 'Dutch', but from where did the word 'German' come?)

And another example is Finland, where the native word is Suomeen (I think)...
what caused the word Finn to come into existance?

I'm sure there are other examples... Hungary, Greece, Albania (?),
Croatia (although I can see a resemblance to Hrvatska), etc...

[And as a brief aside, wasn't there someone a few years ago claiming that we
 had got it all wrong, and should still refer to Beijing as Peking?
 Interestingly enough, we still refer to Shanghai as Shanghai, at least
 here in Australia, or is that one of the new versions?]


Paul.


--
Paul Dwerryhouse.           Electronic Engineering 
thed@mundil.cs.mu.OZ.AU thed@snoopy.apana.org.au    University of Melbourne.
34 Grey St. Vermont. Vic. 3133. Australia.          Ph: +61 3 874 0114
World Wide Web:  http://www.cs.mu.OZ.AU/~thed        or +61 3 872 3856
