LINGUIST List 10.19

Thu Jan 7 1999

Qs: Naming conventions, Speaking rate

Editor for this issue: Brett Churchill <brettlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Graham Rhind, Conventions for personal names
2. Mark_Mandel, Speaking rate

Hello,

My name is Graham Rhind, and I am a specialist and author in the field
of international address and name data management.

I am currently writing a book which includes a chapter about naming
conventions. The information is slanted towards given and family
names, and how these change within and between families, as this is
the issue which is faced by managers of international data. For
example, I discuss the double first and double last names for Spanish-
and Portuguese-speakers and how these are formulated; the use in
Iceland of the first name of the father plus -son or -dottir as a
surname for children; name order (such as last name then first name as
in Hungary); name composition, e.g. feminised versions of last names
in Slavic languages, laws regarding these names (e.g., in Que'bec
province, Canada, married females are obliged to retain their maiden
names) and so on.

Inevitably, I have found this data difficult to track down. I am
based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and am unable to get access to
journals or other sources here. Can anybody provide me with, or point
me to, any data or sources which I could use to brush up my knowledge
about these naming conventions and the laws applied to them throughout
the world?

Many thanks in advance to anybody who can help.

Best wishes,

Graham Rhind
________________________________
http://www.grcdi.nl/

I would appreciate pointers to research on the relationship between
speaking rate and the duration of individual speech sounds in the
speech stream.


 Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : markdragonsys.com
 Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02460, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/