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Wednesday, May 09, 2007

My Name is *My* Name and it's pronounced the way I pronounce it.

Michael O'Hare demonstrates that, not only can he speak my adopted language, but he knows more than me about how to pronounce words in the language of my original ethnic group -- the Magyars (some call us Hungarians but we are Magyars).

He says that Sarkozy should be pronounced Sharkozy "the same reports repeatedly note his embrace of his Hungarian parentage, which indicates that his real name (language is what's spoken; writing is a notation for it) would be written in English as Sharkozy, and with the accent firmly on the first syllable"

Good point on Magyar phonetics, but Sarkozy's real name is whatever he calls himself.

My grandfather changed his name from Valdmann Caroly to Charlie Waldmann when he emigrated to the USA. My name is Robert Waldmann spelled Robert Ualdman in Italian. I don't know this Valdmann Robert guy.

Now as to how a Magyar got an Austrian name, well we are all very vague on that point.

update: Thanks for the link. See the comment. Despite the doubts expressed about the honor of my female ancestors (ancestrixes ???) I won't mention that modern dueling with swords is called fencing "hungarian style" (Italians used sword and dagger). Michael O'Hare really is brilliant and an example of how the apparently impossible is possible. The apparently impossible was Mark Kleiman's determination to increase the average intelligence of bloggers at www.samefacts.com with each new invitation to join the reality based community.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, Magyar women have long been noted for their beauty and the Austrian lieutenants and captains were catnip for many of them, in their spiffy uniforms when Hungary was in the empire and occupied...I think it's the world's oldest story. :-)