Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2012 August 4

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August 4

Are Ivanovich and Johnson the same last name?

Based on my knowledge of Russian, I'd say Yes since Ivan = John and ovich = son. Am I correct? Futurist110 (talk) 08:34, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

They have similar origins, yes, but I would be careful in translating names. The translated version would not be acceptable on any official form, for example, as it would not be the name appearing on the passport or ID card of the individual. As a linguist, I am sick and tired of hearing people say "What's my name in [whatever language]", because it's just a gibberish and useless question. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 11:12, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

They mean the same thing. But they are not the same last name — there is no context in which you could present them as being synonymous. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:59, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

More specifically, while Ivan and John are cognate, descended from the Hebrew name Yohanan, -son and -ovich are synonomous, but not cognate, since they did not evolve from the same root. One could potentially describe the words as calques, although I seriously doubt there is any evidence that they were deliberately copied from each other or some third source. I have to agree with KägeTorä that translating the names of others is fruitless, although individuals obviously take on adapted names for themselves in different linguistic contexts, for purposes such as ease of pronunciation, or marketing, and so on. μηδείς (talk) 17:51, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

To make the point clearer, I don't think anyone named Joseph would consider "Giuseppe" their name. Mingmingla (talk) 18:01, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

My world collapsed when I discovered that the person with the (to me) exotic sounding name of Giuseppe Verdi was really Joe Green. HiLo48 (talk) 18:18, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

It's hard to imagine a 19th century Italian composer as a defensive lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 18:35, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

In the mid-90s there was a journeyman F1 driver with the fantastic name of Giovanni Lavaggi - Johnny Carwash - Cucumber Mike (talk) 20:41, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

How about Bedřich Smetana = Fred Sour Cream. Or Montserrat Caballé = Black Mountain Horse. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 21:58, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

This one I'll never understand, and it's English: Dick Trickle Mingmingla (talk) 22:16, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Joey Buttafuoco: Joseph Throw-fire. No Wikipedia articles for people with this name, but "Buttacavoli" means "Throw cauliflowers". And Isoroku Yamamoto's personal name (五十六) means "56".--Shirt58 (talk) 02:53, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

And I share a birthday with Pietro Filippo Scarlatti—or is that Peter Scarlett, a British diplomat?  dalahäst ^{(let's talk!)} 19:14, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

There's also Pakistan's own Biggus Dickus, Akbar Zeb. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:00, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I don't get your point, Mingmingla. I use the Spanish version of my name in Spanish conversation--Spanish speakers often mistake one of the consonants in my name for another and misinterpret it entirely, sort of like hearing me say my name is Maddie and getting the response, "Yes, Mary." Someone who insisted in China or Japan on being called Frank would be sorely disappointed. All of my elder relatives had both their birth names and their "American" names. Of course, if one non-Italian American starts calling another non-Italian American Giuseppe out of the blue it will be seen as odd, kidding or offensive. But not if they are in Italy or some similar context. The bottom line is that the choice is up to the individual as to what he wants other people to call him, and not all people have a problem with assimilating to their circumstances. μηδείς (talk) 18:32, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

I take your point that people can adapt their name for appropriate circumstance, but that doesn't make it the same name. You can use an adaptation that matches the meaning if the dominant culture demands it. I will amend my statement to "I don't think most people named Joseph would consider "Giuseppe" their name, except under exceptional circumstance." It's a bit like variants in spelling, I suppose. Steven/Stephen/Stephan being a prime example, and John/Jon/Jonathon being another. They aren't the same, and the owners of those names are very much attached to their own versions to the point of being offend if people use the wrong one even after being told otherwise. Mingmingla (talk) 19:27, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, part of the problem is the confusion of semantics and metaphysics. Asking what someone's name is is rather problematic, as if names were facts of nature. Names are matters of convention, see nominalism. Using a more sophisticated terminology everyone could agree that a person was given a certain "birth name" and that that name might have different versions in different languages, historically or as a matter of phonological adaptation. Ignoring the diphthong and the long consonnat, neither Italians nor Anglophones really have a major problem saying Joe or Giuseppe. Those names are historically related and recognized as versions of each other. (Yet I have never heard anyone suggest that someone named Sean should be called John "in English".) And Frank is simply impossible in Chinese, where no historically related native version exists. μηδείς (talk) 19:42, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

If we had a verbal phrase along the lines of "how are you / would you like to be called?" rather than "what is your name?", as many other languages do, problem solved. - filelakeshoe 21:35, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Succinctly: Translation is not transliteration. Transliterating names from culture to culture is necessary and appropriate. Translating them is usually not. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:52, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Can you be more explicit? Are you speaking only of transliteration by alphabet? For example, Джон Джонсон? μηδείς (talk) 23:11, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

By alphabet, by phoneme, whatever. By meaning, no — that's translation. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:10, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

So Joseph would become Giosef(fo), but not Giuseppe? μηδείς (talk) 03:03, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether "Giosef" was serious (I wouldn't imagine Italians would have any trouble calling people "Joe" or "Gio"), but I've seen this kinda thing happen, my friend Lindsay eventually became known as Linzi in the Czech Republic, which isn't a Czech name or a cognate or anything. There are definitely cases where names are translated, learning to say ř took me 2 years, I doubt you're gonna go through that trouble just to pronounce Jiří Řeřicha's name correctly, and he may prefer to become known as George Watercress than whatever mispronunciation of his name people decide on. - filelakeshoe 11:45, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I suppose my point is that while transliteration is a written phenomenon, people speak in...speech. What in the world does it mean to say Italians call Joseph their transliterated version of Joseph? Are we to expect that they spell out his name letter by letter when they address him? Of course not. And native Italian words do not end in eff. The notion's effing ridiculous. English has the habit of keeping foreign spellings while ignoring their pronunciation. Because of that, monolingual English speakers don't realize that even Anglophones necessarily assimilate the phonology foreign words. μηδείς (talk) 12:21, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Transliteration is not just written. Russians transliterate "Harvard" to "Garvard"... and that's how they pronounce it, too. In my book, that's still transliteration. It's not translation. Ditto with proper names — they call Hilary Clinton "Gilary," they don't substitute it with some sort of traditional Russian name. Brazilians pronounce "Robin" as "Hobin." As for whether that will be seen as mispronunciation by the originating folks, of course, but that's not interesting or surprising. Americans don't generally rename people with typical Chinese names "Chuck" or "Bill" just because it's more convenient. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:11, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I suspected you were using your own "book" in calling phonetic assimilation "transliteration"; at least now that's out in the open. The article transliteration directly contradicts you in its second paragraph. See also the section on changes in pronunciation in the article loanword. We don't seem to have an article on phonetic nativization as such. μηδείς (talk) 17:10, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

In Russian, Harvard is Гарвард. That's strict transliteration. It requires pronunciation changes if you read the latter as the actual word — it no longer says "Harvard" anymore. That's my point. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:14, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

"Americans don't generally rename people with typical Chinese names "Chuck" or "Bill" just because it's more convenient" - oh yes they do. It's actually quite common for Chinese people to use English equivalents of their given names in the Anglophone world. - filelakeshoe 14:36, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

My point is they don't just do it routinely. There are ad hoc name changes and name adoptions of course, but it's not the old days of Ellis Island anymore where Americans just routinely give foreigners new names. Plenty of foreigners change their own names to make it easier for others, but if you went to the DMV and said "ah, just call me Jimmy" instead of your actual name, it would not be recognized as correct substitution, even if your name was pretty much the equivalent of "Jimmy" in your native language. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:14, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Ellis Island name changes are a myth.[Genealogy.com: They Changed Our Name at Ellis Island] Families changed their names on their own as they assimilated but not at Ellis Island, nor did the immigration officials changes names on their own. Rmhermen (talk) 13:20, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I once asked a Chinese man named Ruben Goldstein how he got that name. He explained that this was the name of the person in front of him at Ellis Island. When the Chinese man was then asked his name, he said "Sam Ting", so the immigration official wrote down "Ruben Goldstein" again. :-) StuRat (talk) 19:31, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

(EC) I strongly question the accuracy of your last statement. A lot of Chinese people do have a nominally English or Western names for a variety of reasons, however it's fairly rare for it to be an equivalent to their given name. For starters, some Chinese people from HK, Malaysia and Singapore are given an English or Western name at birth. While this sometimes relates to their Chinese given name often it does not and is instead chosen via other methods. As for those who do take on a name themselves, there are a variety of ways they end up with it (I avoided the word choose because in not all cases do they really make a choice) but often relation to their given name is not much or any of a factor. Reading the example you gave, it seems clear relation to their Chinese given name was not a factor there either. A notable issue here is that in some cases, particularly with mainland Chinese who decide to take on a name without much feedback from English speakers, they sometimes take on a name which just seems bizzare. (This is sometimes done on purpose, but now always.) [1] http://www.chinese-tools .com/forum/read.html?q=14%2C122278 [2] [3] Also as I said, this happens for a variety of reasons rather then always being case of Americans or others renaming them because it's more convient (as you suggested). It's true in some cases it's somewhat forced on them by others, this particularly happened in the past. But often nowadays it's mostly their choice for reasons like perceptions that it's easier to remember, makes them stand out less, they don't have to explain how to pronounce it and possibly not even how to spell etc. I can't specifically speak for Americans, but I think with many New Zealanders nowadays have no problems with Chinese people who only have their Chinese name and don't generally prompt them to take on an English/Western name because it's more convient. (For most of those who do push the issue, actually having such a name won't help much. Personally being part Chinese and solely having a Chinese name, I feel the practice is unnecessary, there may be a small advantage in reducing discrimination with CVs but probably not much and I suspect some of the other advantages like ease of memory aren't really true. But of course, it's the person's choice.) Nil Einne (talk) 18:38, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

What would you call it when the spelling is the same but the pronunciation different? The Uruguayan footballer Sebastián Coates pronounces his name 'Coe-ah-tez', whereas his Scottish father pronounces it to rhyme with 'boats'. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 13:27, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Lamentable. —Tamfang (talk) 00:17, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

When I'm consorting with the Russian community, I automatically switch to Vanya (diminutive of Ivan) as my name. Truth to tell, it's not really my decision, but it's what I would get called whether I like it or not; I don't mind it in the slightest, so I go along with it. When we're being faux-formal, I even become Ivan Ronaldovich, which, apart from sounding a bit naff, completely ignores the fact that I have legally changed my given name from John to Jack. If I ever migrated to Russia, I'd seriously consider adopting a name with the standard given name-patronymic-surname formula, but Jack Ronaldovich <surname> would not be a goer. Sorry, Dad. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 22:20, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

I've always thought it nifty that the Noldor who settled in Beleriand adapted their names to Sindarin using etymology. — I knew an American of Slavic Jewish descent who speaks Chinese and translated his birth name, as far as possible, for his "Chinese name". —Tamfang (talk) 00:17, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the answer is a simple "no": in Russian "Ivanovich" is not a "last name", but a patronymic. The last name that corresponds to "Ivan" would be "Ivanov". --Martynas Patasius (talk) 17:52, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Patronymics are a type of family name, and the concept of a last name was a family name marker. "Johnson" is a patronymic as well, that is used as a last name. From the Johnson article: The name itself is a patronym of the given name John, literally meaning "son of John". Ian.thomson (talk) 18:11, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd say the literal meaning of the family name is unimportant, these days, as the number of Johnsons who have a father named John is probably about the same as the general population. The same is true of last names based on occupation, geographic feature, etc. Thus, the meaning it once had has been lost. StuRat (talk) 19:26, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Are you sure that Иванович is never used as a фамилия (inherited family name) in Russian? Certainly family names with vič exist elsewhere in the Slavic world. —Tamfang (talk) 00:17, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

For the record, I do consider Giuseppe = Joseph, just like I consider Evsei/Yevsei = Yehoshua = Joshua/Josh. Also, some people have the last name Ivanovich/Ivanovic without having a father named Ivan (or some variant of this name). Also, I just realized that this question needs to be moved to the Language section. Futurist110 (talk) 23:53, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Many A small number of Russians with an -ovich surname are descended from Serbians. I count 12 -ovich surnames at List of surnames in Russia. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 00:53, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually, most of those from the list are descended from Ukrainian or Polish names, and/or are Jewish. Such descent is much more likely, due to geographic proximity and intensity of contact, isn't it? There has been a number of Serbs taking important roles in the Russian history, but due to surname extinction and Russianization there are not much traces left in the form of surnames. No such user (talk) 13:09, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure you're right. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 20:58, 6 August 2012 (UTC)