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Translating names to Esperanto

by ljbookworm, October 12, 2009

Messages: 99

Language: English

Rogir (User's profile) January 6, 2010, 1:35:08 AM

If you are going into a more phonetic word for Firefox I still recommend using the root fajr- because it is so close in pronunciation: Fajrfokso.

ceigered (User's profile) January 6, 2010, 8:25:02 AM

Rogir:If you are going into a more phonetic word for Firefox I still recommend using the root fajr- because it is so close in pronunciation: Fajrfokso.
Fajrfokso or Fajarfokso, either look good to me in hindsight ridulo.gif ("fajr" would be /fair/ which is really hard to pronounce purely without adding a schwa or small 'a' in between j and r, but most should recognise it easier and understand a corrupted pronunciation of it).

atelo (User's profile) February 2, 2010, 8:18:26 PM

Rogir:I still recommend [...] fajr-
Is really [r] close to any english other than scottish?

ceigered (User's profile) February 3, 2010, 5:49:42 AM

atelo:
Rogir:I still recommend [...] fajr-
Is really [r] close to any english other than scottish?
Rhotic accents ("R" accents) often have a softer "r" sound there, like in many American dialects. But Scottish and Irish english are the two main rolling-R dialects.

keithtx (User's profile) February 4, 2010, 7:27:15 PM

I think my name "Keith" sounds a lot like "Kate" if you use esperanto pronunciation

Oŝo-Jabe (User's profile) February 5, 2010, 6:37:38 AM

keithtx:I think my name "Keith" sounds a lot like "Kate" if you use esperanto pronunciation
Well, if you don't want people mispronouncing it you could go with the nicknames "Kit" or "Kiĉjo".

laoreilly (User's profile) February 6, 2010, 7:03:39 PM

To my ear, my name, Lee-Anne, sounds too much like the esperanto objective possessive pronoun, lian. I have an unpleasant, knee-jerk response to the the idea of being thought of as "his", so in speaking Esperanto, I shorten my name to Linjo. In text, I keep the original spelling.

blahface (User's profile) February 11, 2010, 10:15:05 PM

What happens if a name is the object of a sentence? How is it altered? For example, is the following correct?

Fred vidas Bill.

Or would you have to add -on like this

Fred vidas Billon.

If first is correct, then how do you know for sure who is doing the action?

trojo (User's profile) February 11, 2010, 10:57:27 PM

blahface:What happens if a name is the object of a sentence? How is it altered? For example, is the following correct?

Fred vidas Bill.

Or would you have to add -on like this

Fred vidas Billon.

If first is correct, then how do you know for sure who is doing the action?
You add -on in that case. See for example Zamenhof's translation of the Bible, where this is done repeatedly, e.g. Genesis 3:8-9...

"Kaj ili aŭdis la voĉon de Dio la Eternulo, kiu marŝis en la ĝardeno dum la malvarmeto de la tago; kaj Adam kaj lia edzino kaŝiĝis de Dio la Eternulo inter la arboj de la ĝardeno. Kaj Dio la Eternulo vokis Adamon, kaj diris al li: Kie vi estas?"

I quote Dr. Z because his style should be considered normative.

Some may object to having their names inflected like that, but it is the same principle at work when we inflect foreign names for the possessive in English, e.g. Mohammed's or Wei Jin's or whatever. Obviously the "apostrophe-S" affix doesn't exist in the source languages of those names, but that doesn't stop us from adding it in English.

In my case, my name fits well into Esperanto. The Esperanto name for the ancient city of Troy is Trojo, so it both looks and sounds pretty close to the original version, and is pretty widely-known (even if not necessarily as a personal name). Also as an added bonus, J and O are the first two letters of my last name, so to an English-speaker, "Trojo" looks like a portmanteau of my first and last names.

Oŝo-Jabe (User's profile) February 12, 2010, 1:49:12 AM

trojo:
blahface:Or would you have to add -on like this

Fred vidas Billon.
You add -on in that case. See for example Zamenhof's translation of the Bible, where this is done repeatedly,

I quote Dr. Z because his style should be considered normative.
Zamenhof actually used two systems that I can discern. His fully-Esperanto system, and the partially-Esperanto system.

In the Bible you get things like:
Noa-Noan
Adam-Adamon
Rabŝake-Rabŝaken

In the Fables of Andersen and La Batalo de l' Vivo (Nowadays, - is more common than '):
Thomas-Thomas'on
Mary-Mary'n
Grace-Grace'n (This one's odd.)
Clemency-Clemency'n

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