proper names

Hello. Does anyone know the origin of this Spanish name. What is the "O" referring to? Is it some saint/ virgin? Our Lady of the O? Thanks for your contribution. Hola. ¿Alguien sabe cuál sería el origen de este nombre de pila femenino? ¿A qué se refiere esta "o"? ¿Es una santa o una...

It is clear that the Spanish name Diego (sometimes apparently spelled Diago) is NOT a variant of Jacov/Iago. So too it is highly unlikely to be a vernacular form of the Latin(ised) Didacus. [I think it is unlikely to be Arabic, but it could just be Jewish - like Jacov.] The earliest extant...

Hello, are these surnames related in Maltese? I ask it beacuse the famous actress Edwige Fenech was born as Edwige Sfenek but at some point decided to change her surname in Fenech, which seems to be pretty common in Malta, while Sfenek is likely rarer. Also, what is the current pronunciation of...

Are vowels of the article a and preposition de reduced to /ɐ/ (/a̝/) and /ɪ/ (/e̝/), respectively, in proper names? Dicionario de pronuncia da lingua galega transcribes the article a and preposition de as /ɐ/ and /dɪ/ respectively, but in proper names they're transcribed as /a/ and /de/. For...

Hello, everybody, My question has two parts: 1. How does the Chineese name devide in the firstname(given name) and lastname(common for the family)? 2. How to address a Chineese person in English using 'Mr', 'Mrs' and so on? The rule is that in this case we use only the lastname. If a person's...

I see more and more names on my Facebook that I recognise to be written in pinyin. I consider that, of course, a good thing when I'm trying to learn Mandarin. Here are some random people, and forgive me if these names are unique because I know no way of telling so: Mengqiao Liu Lin Yu Cheng...

The last thread about merged(ambiguous) simplified characters got closed because it drifted away to a SC/TC debate. So please let's stay on topic this time. Converting ambiguous SC to TC is usually not a problem because there is context. But what about mainlanders' personal names in SC? Let's...

Greetings, Thanks you Cheryl Sui for suggestion of Yinxing Village. Can I ask a question about how Chinese place names are constructed? Village is Cūnlǐ, so Yingxing Village would be Yingxing Cūnlǐ ( I believe). Are they ever compressed as in England to one word? e.g Bradford, Bolton...

I have been wondering about affixes in Dutch, that are used to express affection. I mean: we have the affixes called diminutives (in Dutch Bart-je, in Flemish also Paul-ke, like the German Gret-chen oder Häns-el (etc.). In English it does not exist as such, I think, but the same is expressed by...

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=563292 Hi, In the above Japanese thread we discussed the reverse: Chinese names pronounced in Japanese. Although the Chinese pronunciation of the Japanese names looks more straightforward, need to use the Chinese reading of a character to find...

Hi, I'm editing an art catalogue in Chile which will go to China, and it will be entirely in Chinese. I have a huge doubt concerning credits. Although the Spanish names of people involved in the exhibition and catalogue were translated into Chinese, and in some cases the translation already...

I have been told there are Chinese people whose surname is written Ng. How do they pronounce it?

How is it done in written Chinese, since it's a character-based language? Of course you could use pinyin, but is that really the standard way of doing it? Thanks, -Jonathan.

Chinese natives, when presented with a Chinese name, can you unequivocally identify the gender of the particular person? Jana