| Title: | Under other skies: Articulatory habits and cultural interference in the forms one’s personal name takes abroad |
| Authors: | Ephraim Nissan, Ghil‘ad Zuckermann |
| Publication: | Numele și numirea. Actele Conferinței Internaționale de Onomastică. Ediția a III-a: Conventional / unconventional in onomastics, p. 269 |
| ISBN: | 978-606-543-671-8 |
| Editors: | Oliviu Felecan |
| Publisher: | Editura Mega, Editura Argonaut |
| Place: | Cluj-Napoca |
| Year: | 2015 |
| Abstract: | Persons who live other than in their country of origin often find their personal names mispronounced, and acquiesce in this, or even adopt that pronunciation of their names to make their integration smoother. Some other times, they may change name. Or then, they may propose such a modification of their personal name, that it phono-semantically matches some sense in the recipient language. Some other times, the phono-semantic match is combined with mispronunciation in how others come to call them. In this article, our main exemplification is from a Singaporean context or a Chinese context for the family name of one of the authors, and an Italian context or a British context for the family name of the other author. Oliviu Felecan had previously discussed a Singaporean identity card for a young man, Batman bin Suparman, who was ethnically Malay but whose names are inspired by superheroes in American popular culture. Ghil‘ad Zuckermann found himself called Zulkarman while teaching in Singapore, and apparently that name exhibits interference from Zul Karnayn (from Arabic dhul-Qarnayn ‘he of the two horns’, i.e., Alexander the Great). Zuckermann also adopted a Sinified, punning form of his name while in China. Ephraim Nissan, too, relates interesting experiences with his own name, including his being mistaken for a Japanese by a future collaborator of many years, his delight for there being a Nissan Institute in Oxford (that must be the ultimate accolade for a scholar), and his recognising his own name in the abbreviation EPH.NIS. used in a famous Syriac dictionary he was browsing, in order to refer to the prominent patristic author Ephrem Nisibenus, i.e., Ephrem Syrus, Ephrem of Nisibis. |
| Key words: | cultural recontextualization, onomastic modification, onomastic perception, name bearer acquiescence vs agency |
| Language: | English |
| Links: |  pdf |
Citations to this publication: 0
References in this publication: 1
| 1 | Sarah Fleming, Ghil‘ad Zuckermann | One name, two parents: The marketing potential of Phono-Semantic Matching in China | ICONN 2, 119 | 2013 | pdf html |
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