Skip to primary content
Skip to secondary content

The Journeyler

A walk through: Life, Leadership, Linguistics, Language Documentation, WordPress, and OS X (and a bit of Marketing & Business Administration)

The Journeyler

Main menu

  • Home
  • CV/Resume
    • Hugh’s Curriculum Vitae
  • Library
    • Linguistic Articles
  • Photos
    • Photography
    • NextGen Album
    • Hugh’s Gallery
  • Location
    • Cartography
    • Geo-Tagging
    • GPS
  • Language Documentation
    • Linguistics
    • Digital Archival
  • Open Drafts
  • Archives

Tag Archives: Names

Citations, Names and Language Documentation

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Hugh Paterson III
Reply

I have recently been reading the blog of Martin Fenner and came upon the article Personal names around the world [1] Martin Fenner. 14 August 2011. Personal names around the world. PLoS Blog Network. http://blogs.plos.org/mfenner/2011/08/14/personal-names-around-the-world . [Accessed: 16 September 2011]. [Link] . His post is in fact a reflection on a W3C paper on Personal Names around the WorldSeveral other reflections are here: http://www.w3.org/International/wiki/Personal_names (same title). This is apparently coming out of the i18n effort and is an effort to help authors and database designers make informed decisions about names on the web.
I read Martin’s post with some interest because in Language Documentation getting someone’s name as a source or for informed consent is very important (from a U.S. context). Working in a archive dealing with language materials, I see lot of names. One of the interesting situations which came to me from an Ecuadorian context was different from what I have seen in the w3.org paper or in the w3.org discussion. The naming convention went like this:

The elder was known by the younger’s name plus a relationship.

My suspicion is that it is a taboo to name the dead. So to avoid possibly naming the dead, the younger was referenced and the the relationship was invoked. This affected me in the archive as I am supposed to note who the speaker is on the recordings. In lue of the speakers name, I have the young son’s first name, who is well known in the community, and is in his 30’s or so, and I have the relationship. So in English this might sound like John’s mother. Now what am I supposed to put in the metadata record for the audio recordings I am cataloging? I do not have a name but I do have a relationship to a known (to the community) person.

I inquired with a literacy consultant who has worked in Ecuador with indigenous people for some years, she informed me that in one context she was working in everyone knew what family line they were from and all the names were derived from that family line by position. It was of such that to call someone by there name was an insult.

It sort of reminds me of this sketch by Fry and Laurie.
httpvh://youtu.be/hNoS2BU6bbQ

References[+]

↑1 Martin Fenner. 14 August 2011. Personal names around the world. PLoS Blog Network. http://blogs.plos.org/mfenner/2011/08/14/personal-names-around-the-world . [Accessed: 16 September 2011]. [Link]
Posted in Access, Audio, Blogging, Citations, Digital Archival, Language Documentation, Meta-data | Tagged archival, Language Documentation, metadata, Names | Leave a reply

I’ve been saying

  • Review of Endnote X8 for Mac
  • Solar Stats
  • New sentences
  • Mommy wrote it.
  • Eugene socio-political resources
  • Missing bear found!
  • SVG Fonts – the learning
  • Ice cream
  • The old books
  • Great Resources for Property owners in Eugene Oregon
  • Only chopsticks
  • Trivalent Verb

Say What?

  • Michael Paterson on Hugh Paterson (1781) of Edinburgh
  • Robert Rouse on RDF Ontologies for the Bible
  • Oma on The climbing gym 2nd time
  • Peter Brassington on Language Survey
  • Kristina Cartwright on The Larsons

One should not consider the content on this website to be an official opinion of any company associated with me. These posts are solely my opinion.

Proudly powered by WordPress