sudanglo skribis:
"Whatever might be the thought processes of non-Esperantist speakers of OVS languages is besides the point."

Except that they are encouraged to learn Esperanto by being told that it allows for a word order they are familiar with, and on finding differently they leave, and tell their friends to not waste their time.

Rugxdoma skibis:
"For users of Esperanto it cannot be difficult to handle these very rare situations, where both subject and object are proper names, and neither ending on a vovel. To rely on word order only is too risky."

Agreed 100%
There were different interpretations of Erinja's example even among native English speakers, who share a common native language.
The risk of differring interpretations would be even greater among speakers of differing native languages.

Bemused:Except that they are encouraged to learn Esperanto by being told that it allows for a word order they are familiar with, and on finding differently they leave, and tell their friends to not waste their time.

Then the solution to problems like this is clear. The community as a whole needs to stop making inaccurate claims about the language in the propaganda (used neutrally). It's not like it can't stand on its own.

Please, tell me if it would make sense in esperanto.

Suppose that John and Fred are tennis players...

If I say: Ĉimatene, Ĝonon batis Fred kaj ĉiposttagmeze, John batis Fredon.

Well, first of all you need a better verb - bati means 'beat' as in physically hit!

But to answer your question, I think it's better to be consistent. If you're going to Esperanticise a name, do it throughout; otherwise leave it as-is throughout. Jumping back and forth in one text, especially in one sentence, is quite confusing.

If you have an un-Esperanticised subject and object in the same sentence, then normally you revert to SVO word other. Otherwise, you can just slap an -on on the end of the object, with a dash if need be - John-on, Fred-on, etc. This sometimes looks clumsy, but gets the job done.

morfran:This business with un-Esperanto-izable names has always been a murky one, but since the conversation seems to have drifted to word order, here’s the PAG’s two cents on the issue:

Plena Analiza Gramatiko:272 In Esperanto the word order is free, that is, there are no special word order rules in it; one must strive only for clarity and euphony. Still, in Esperanto certain principles are in effect, which to disobey are not advised, because they conform to the natural course of thought. And there even exist a few rare occasions when one must keep to a fixed word order.

The normal word order is: subject, predicate, object, circumstantial complement. One can change this order, and often even must ... But one must not make changes without cause, because only in this way can one make the change mean something and allow one to get a sense of a certain nuance: the accentuation of a certain sentence element.

that first paragraph sounds like a lot of wishy-washy fence straddling to me. Either Esperanto has a default word order or it doesn't. Can't have it both ways.
And FWIW, for Hixkaryana speakers the "natural order of thought" is OVS.

that first paragraph sounds like a lot of wishy-washy fence straddling to me. Either Esperanto has a default word order or it doesn't. Can't have it both ways.
And FWIW, for Hixkaryana speakers the "natural order of thought" is OVS.

Well, it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing affair.

I definitely agree that "natural order of thought" is subjective - PAG displays a clear Indo-European bias here.

On the other hand, some word orders in Esperanto are much more common than others - as computer analysis of a text will reveal. SVO is seen by far the most.

In situations where neither subject nor object can take an accusative, SVO word order is preferred and it often looks weird to deviate from it.

Consider:

-->Multe da homoj faris multe da eraroj. - Errors don't make people, but people make errors, so you could ostensibly say Multe da eraroj faris multe da homoj without too much confusion (though this sounds unusual).

But:

-->Iom da junuloj vidis iom da junulinoj. Who saw whom? This has to be SVO word order.

Tempodivalse:

that first paragraph sounds like a lot of wishy-washy fence straddling to me. Either Esperanto has a default word order or it doesn't. Can't have it both ways.
And FWIW, for Hixkaryana speakers the "natural order of thought" is OVS.

Well, it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing affair.

I definitely agree that "natural order of thought" is subjective - PAG displays a clear Indo-European bias here.

On the other hand, some word orders in Esperanto are much more common than others - as computer analysis of a text will reveal. SVO is seen by far the most.

In situations where neither subject nor object can take an accusative, SVO word order is preferred and it often looks weird to deviate from it.

Oh, I agree, and taking Mr. Hartwell's comment along with thy observations of PMAG, there should clear directives in all learning materials that "standard/default" word order is SVO and varbiantoj should stop with the blanket "free word order" proclamations.

Bemused:... Except that they are encouraged to learn Esperanto by being told that it allows for a word order they are familiar with, and on finding differently they leave, and tell their friends to not waste their time...

I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but if someone's attitude is going to be:
"Wait, you said I could use any word order I wanted to, but you mean to say that word order does matter 5% of the time, and it has to be SVO? I CANNOT ACCEPT THIS!!!",
I'm probably not going to stand in the way of their storming out in a huff. They just seem like the sort of people who might be troublesome to deal with in general.

Sometimes life is self-sorting that way.

Roch:Yeah, but a simple hyphen may well leave the foreign word's pronunciation inaccurate ! John may seems easy as far as you don't follow the akademio rules of reading... Iohn!? Yohn? In allowing those un-esperantized names in the language, I think that the akademio should encourage the phonetic writing of the accusative...

[...]

In the case that it isn't against some rules... That you guys may know about!?

Well, it is almost always obvious when a name is un-Esperanticised, because it does not feature an Esperanto ending and has spellings or letters unusual for Esperanto (nobody would try to pronounce 'Rockefeller' as "Rots-keh-fel-l-ehr" ).

Again, it is a matter of confusion. Suppose I have not heard of the company Chrysler before. In a text I see "Chrysler" un-Esperanticised. I'm not sure how it is pronounced, but I know how it looks on the page and I can identify it later.

But suppose the same text later references "Krajsler-on". I have no idea what this refers to, since it doesn't look much like "Chrysler", and I don't know that it's simply a phoneticisation of "Chrysler". I would be quite confused.

Honestly, I don't see a problem here. If you're going to leave names un-Esperanticised (which is often done), there's no need to mark the accusative at all. In most cases it will be obvious that it's the object, because the other preposition-less term in the clause will be in the nominative.

If both object and subject are un-Esperanticised, the normal (best) procedure is to revert to SVO word order. There's nothing wrong with this.

The other acceptable, but non-ideal, option is to append -on, which looks ugly but gets the job done. However, I'd only use this if I really wanted something other than SVO word order.

Firstly, THIS IS ESPERANTO, NOT LOJBAN!! It is not Esperanto's goal to eliminate ambiguity. Except for a few exceptions, every language has some kind of ambiguity. Use the context surrounding the sentence to guess the meaning. 99% of the time, you can simply imply the meaning of the sentence by on the context. The other 1% is insignificant. Take a look at Japanese, many of the sentences are "vague" and requires you to look at the context to get the meaning. It is also not uncommon in Japanese to have sentences that can have more than 1 meaning even after considering the context. In that case, it's best to clarify it with the speaker. If that's not possible, too bad. It's not going to be life-changing anyway. If over hundreds of millions of people have been communicating in Japanese for centuries, I don't see why this super minor bit of ambiguity is an issue for Esperanto.

Secondly, not everybody's first name is 1 word long. My first name is 2 words long but I won't reveal it here. Let me use the current prime minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong as an example. His surname is Lee and his given name is Hsien Loong. How are you going to esperantise this name? Hsien Loongon? Hsien-Longon? HsienLoongon? Hsienan Loongon? Hsieno-Loongon? There is no official rules or even generally agreed upon ways to esperantise names. What if a name already ends with an 'O'? Should you add another 'O'? What about the pronunciation of the name? Does that change too? There is no end to these questions.

Lastly, many major languages don't even convert foreign names to their language in the first place, unless it's a prominent figure. Many Chinese news media usually stick with the original name and pronunciation when they encounter foreign names. In fact, The same thing applies to all languages. Even English news shows try to pronounce foreign names as close to the original pronunciation as possible, unless there is a commonly used anglicized version of it. Keeping the name in its original form is also a way to show that you respect the person and the meaning behind the name.

TLDR: Don't Esperantize proper names.

orthohawk:And FWIW, for Hixkaryana speakers the "natural order of thought" is OVS.

And for 80% of humankind it's SVO. The norm should be built around the majority, not 0.0001% of abnormalities. My native language is SOV, but I have enough decency not to propose it as a norm for everyone else.