Tangi:

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.

Where did you get these figures from?
Taking the top 100 natively spoken languages (spoken by 85% of the world population) and combining these data with those from the World Atlas of Language Structures here is what I get:
SVO: 51.5%
SOV: 40.5%
No dominant order: 4%
Other: 4%

Being SOV, your native language might be in the minority, but this minority is certainely a sizeable one.

Tangi:

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.

I never said that the norm should be built around the minority. I was reminding everyone that reads that paragraph that the "natural order of thought" is NOT SVO for a lot of people out there (unlike the implication PMAG (inadvertently?) made).

Roch:
Chance are that germans see Chrysler like us: Chrysler but russians see it written in cyrillic : Крайслер

Do you think that the german would "know how the cyrillics looks on a page and can identify it later?" And vice versa?

Names written in non-Latin scripts are always transliterated into Esperanto's alphabet. So Лев Толстой becomes Lev Tolstoj and 胡锦涛 becomes Hu Jintao.

Questions may remain when exactly to Esperanticise and when to leave un-Esperanticised, but as a minimum you should use the Latin script.

Note that I'm basing these comments on established precedent. There is a tendency to dissect these issues in some abstract model, without simply looking at what is actually used in the body of literature. Esperanto exists outside a theoretical vacuum

Well known cities have Esperantized versions of their name that are used by Esperantists, e.g. Londono, Berlino, Filadelfio, etc. I see the more common names (John/Johann/Juan/Jean/etc and others) in the same light. Nobody in London gets all pissy when their city is called Londono in Esperanto, so why should anyone named John react that way?

One of my middle names (and the one I go by in daily life) is Dmitri. In Esperanto I go by Demetrio; same when I'm speaking Spanish. I see no problem with someone named Thomas going by Tomaso, etc. Of course, we can't order someone to use an Esperantized name but I just don't see what the big brouhaha is about.

Johano batis Frederikon/Frecxjon/whatever.

Roch:

orthohawk:Of course, we can't order someone to use an Esperantized name but I just don't see what the big brouhaha is about.

Johano batis Frederikon/Frecxjon/whatever.

That's a :nono since 1989, according to the akademio, you changed John's name to Johano... Today, I'm even thinking to put an s at unesperentized names to show the accusative, John batis Freds, Johns Fred batis... and so on.

We could read the s and ear its sound at the accusative, and the names would be left alone! It won't concern the Akademio since it more looks like plural of names in English. What about it?

Look, I think you're making an issue out of something that isn't an issue.

Even if both subject and object are un-Esperanticised, you don't need to do anything fancy to them. Just rely on SVO word order, or append an -on directly if you are still worried, or want to use non-SVO.

I don't think I'm saying anything controversial here. This is standard practice.

Esperanto isn't open to tinkering. While I'm sure your motivations are good, please understand that this mindset of "oh, I can just go and propose completely new ideas!" is insulting to speakers of the language.

If you were studying some other language and had a problem about case endings, what you'd do is figure out what the accepted usage is, and then try to follow that usage. Can you imagine what the reaction would be if you told a Russian speaker, "I don't like the way you inflect borrowed words. Why don't we just agree to use this new ending I came up with?" It would be taken either as a poor joke or as an insult.

This page on PMEG, a highly reliable source, has a lot of detailed explanation (Note: written in Esperanto).

The gist is that you either Esperanticise the name completely, or leave it in the original language (or a Latinicised version, if the original language is written in another script).

Two pertinent points:

PMEG:Ne-Esperantigitaj nomoj povas aperi O-vortece sen O-finaĵo. Ĉe tiaj nomoj oni ankaŭ povas forlasi N-finaĵon, eĉ se la frazrolo principe postulas tian finaĵon.
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Non-Esperanticised names can appear as nouns without the O-ending. With those names, one can also omit the N-ending, even if the word's role in the sentence would normally dictate it.

PMEG:Se la nomo povas akcepti N-finaĵon (se ĝi finiĝas per vokalo), tiam oni ja kompreneble povas aldoni tian finaĵon. Oni ankaŭ povas almeti O-finaĵon al fremda nomo. Se oni uzas O-finaĵon, oni ankaŭ devas uzi N-finaĵon, se la frazrolo tion postulas. Oni ankaŭ povas antaŭmeti titolon aŭ similan esprimon, kiu povas ricevi N-finaĵon.
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If the name can take the N-ending (i.e. if it ends in a vowel), then of course you can add that ending. You can also add an O-ending to a foreign name. If one uses the O-ending, one also must use the N-ending when demanded by the grammar rules. You can also place a title or other explanatory word, which CAN take the N-ending, before the name.

For example (my own example, not PMEG's):

-->Cxu vi vizitis Koenigsberg?
-->Cxu vi vizitis la urbon Koenigsberg?

You add the explanatory la urbon for two reasons: 1) clarify where the accusative is; 2) clarify what the proper name is (useful when dealing with more obscure names).

http://esperanto.50webs.com/EsrGrammar-3_03.html

Are you related to that site?

Nope

Zzzzzzzzz...

Odd ain't it?

When in doubt I always just use "-on" or "n" and everybody knows what I mean, yet I seem to read endless discussions on what we should do about the non-problem.

Frig, these days I could even stick a "na" there and those who hate it would still understand, and the new crowd would be a quick google away from getting it. (They can learn to hate it later)

Hope ye don't mind me yawning.

Could you please explain the irrational fear of an -n or -on added to a non-Esperanto-looking noun. All this fuss only because somebody thinks you can't write or say "Ĉu vi vizitis Königsbergon?" (or Königsberg-on, if you prefer) or "Fred batis John-on" or "Fredon batis John, ne Tim". There must be some kind of deeply rooted suffixophobia or nomenolatry behind all this.

Ondo:Could you please explain the irrational fear of an -n or -on added to a non-Esperanto-looking noun. All this fuss only because somebody thinks you can't write or say "Ĉu vi vizitis Königsbergon?" (or Königsberg-on, if you prefer) or "Fred batis John-on" or "Fredon batis John, ne Tim". There must be some kind of deeply rooted suffixophobia or nomenolatry behind all this.

This is talking like a finn. Thanks you for this interesting reaction.

Roch:vejktoro I'm curious, is that na comes from an adjective made with the letter no ?

I'm not sure where *na comes from. It may be derived from the Slavic preposition na, though that normally isn't used to indicate a direct object.

Unless you want to get pegged as a beginner, I wouldn't use *na. It's useless and seems to have no clear usage rules. For instance, if naists are so worried about situations where you can't explicitly indicate a direct object, why don't I ever see constructions like *La vojagxanto vidis na multe da urboj*?

Personnaly, thats because John-on is pronouced ionon, [jo] phonetically... I'm sure that in your head, and that everybody pronunce it Ĝon, even the one that replace it by Johano. That one of the first names with Peter that we learn in school books.

Since John does not have an Esperanto ending (-hn is an impossible combination), this is a big clue to the reader that the name has not been Esperanticised and that the spelling is not phonetic.