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A question on Names

de DesertNaiad, 2007-marto-05

Mesaĝoj: 4

Lingvo: English

DesertNaiad (Montri la profilon) 2007-marto-05 23:36:41

Hi, I'm just beginning, and am doing the "Bildoj kaj demandoj" course. I'm not far into it, but have run into a bit of a problem. Both my name and my nickname end in an N sound. Jeannine and Neen. I think the first would become Gxenin, and the second Nin. How do I make either the sentence of a subject? Do I still add an "n"? Or does my name become something quite different when written in Esperanto?

Kwekubo (Montri la profilon) 2007-marto-06 00:23:44

You can call yourself whatever you prefer - and you are under no obligation to transliterate your name into Esperanto unless you feel like it. Generally people add an -o to the end of a name, so that it works just like a noun, but women often prefer to use -a. How about Nina? You could also take your full name, cut off part of the end, and add the -nj- suffix (which is used to make female nicknames), so you could have something like Ĝenjo/Ĝenja, or maybe Ĵenjo/Ĵenja if you'd prefer the nickname to look a little more like the original.

awake (Montri la profilon) 2007-marto-06 00:49:32

Welcome to Esperantujo! (Esperanto-land ridulo.gif

As kwekubo notes, names are very flexible in Eo. they have to be because across other languages, names are handled very differently. The usual thing is to Esperantize your name. That is to convert it to the esperanto alphabet using esperanto sounds. When this is done men usually end their name with an O and women with either an o or an a. These names then take the accusative ending +n where appropriate

For example, Mi vizitas Marian. = I am visting maria
Min vizitas maria - Maria is visiting me.

Here the -n ending indicates the object of the sentence (the person visited rather than the person doing the visiting (the subject of the sentence)).

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If you choose not to esperantize your name, there are a few ways to handle the accusative ending. one is to add -on to the un-esperantized name

Robert vizitas Michael-on.

or, you can indicate it with an honorific (Mr., Mrs., Dr., etc)

Sinjoro Smith vizitas SinjoroN Jones.

So you can follow Kwekubo's suggestions about changing your name, or you can leave it as is. It's up to you.

Just to add to what kwekubo said about nicknames. You may have noticed that Esperanto uses suffixes and prefixes much more extensively and regularly than English

-njo and -ĉjo are the feminine and masculine "nickname" suffixes in Esperanto

So you can see Patrino = Mother or Panjo = Mommy or Mom

Patro = father or Paĉjo = Dad or Daddy

My name is Michael, and I esprantized it as Majkelo (though for awhile I thought about Miĥelo because I like the ĥ sound ridulo.gif...the point is I had lots of choices about how I converted my name, and you do too.

And of course, I could have gone Majĉjo (My-chy
o) which would be like "Mike" ridulo.gif

DesertNaiad:Hi, I'm just beginning, and am doing the "Bildoj kaj demandoj" course. I'm not far into it, but have run into a bit of a problem. Both my name and my nickname end in an N sound. Jeannine and Neen. I think the first would become Gxenin, and the second Nin. How do I make either the sentence of a subject? Do I still add an "n"? Or does my name become something quite different when written in Esperanto?

DesertNaiad (Montri la profilon) 2007-marto-06 10:10:24

Thank you both very much! I would like to Esperantize my name (it should make it much easier for other, non-English-speaking esperantistoj to pronounce), and I think that Ĝenina and Ninjo will work. Hi, glad to meet you. ridulo.gif Mi estas Ĝenina. (I am Jeannine)

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