[conspire] Web spam and yandex forms

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

>  When reading an earlier email in this thread, it took me a moment to
>  remember the definition of "given name".   When asked to give my
>  name, the entries are always for "first name" and "last name", never
>  "given name".  Maybe its different in the UK, where ancestry is more
>  important.

"First name" is indeed more free from cultural assumptions.

We both grew up in a foreign country called the past, but in different
regions, and mine was post-WWII colonial Hong Kong, the British segment
of which was notoriously retro, in its attitudes, _so_ the usage I
encountered there was "Christian name" in distinction to "surname".  

Even at the age of 8, I found the usage "Christian name" a bit
startling, as we were not only not C. of E. but also non-religious
entirely, but that term was the norm.  Over the years, I started
substituting the phrase "given name", which had the advantage of being
non-puzzling to all the English-language speakers young-me encountered.

However, you're right, that "first name" is even a bit more plainspoken,
and is probably most common in American bureaucratese over the last few
decades.

Maybe we should not go into the concept of "middle names", and the fact
that American culture assumes everyone has one, even though they're not
present in many cultures.  One example is Norway, which traditionally
didn't give out middle names.  My paternal great-grandfather had (of
course) surname = "Moen", and given name = "Rudolph Ludwig", a
two-parter -- and no middle namea, because Norwegians weren't given
those in the 19th C.

My dad, Arthur Moen (emigrated to USA from the Port of Bergen on S/S
Stavangerfjord, on Jan. 5, 1929), had continual problems with American
bureaucrats' inability to deal with his absence of any middle name.  In
the politically contentious 1960s, one such official put "X" in the
middle name field on some paperwork, intending what computer programmers
would call the null value -- an obviously bad choice of notation, of
course.  Later, someone who'd seen his name on paper was surprised, upon
meeting him, to encounter a Scandinavian-American.  Why?  Because
"Arthur X" seemed to telegraph that he'd turn out to be Black Muslim.  ;->

Obligatory bonus link:
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/


> For a couple weeks last summer, there was coverage about a certain
> women tennis player from China(?). I don't follow tennis, so I don't
> recall her name, but I do recall the international coverage (BBC for
> example) gave her family name first in the custom of her native
> country.  The US news always had the order reversed.

Name order confusion is frequently a problem with names from many East
Asian countries (in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) -- along with
even some European ones such as Hungary.  I was briefly puzzled by
references to "Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music" in Budapest:  We speakers
of Germanic languages would more naturally call that Franz Liszt Academy
of Music.  ;->"

Hungarians naturalise some foreign names but not others, BTW.  E.g., 
"Tony Blair" remained "Tony Blair" in Hungarian texts -- but, weirdly, 
the older the name, the more likely for it to be naturlised in their
discussion, e.g., Kálvin János for John Calvin / Jean Cauvin.

Pedantry:  Jean Cauvin is the _modern_ French rendition of the
theologian / troublemaker's name.  Because he was born in 1509, he was
baptised as _Jehun_ Cauvin, the same name in _Middle_ French (moyen
français).