No more "Christian name, sir?" in Kent, UK

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:59 AM -0400 3/27/10, Laurence Horn wrote:
>At 11:17 AM +0000 3/27/10, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>>For once, I'm with the Kent force here (or whoever wrote the guidelines).
>>
>>A few years ago, I became personally (internally) uncomfortable with the
>>term "Christian name" -- while I have one, neither of my children do, since
>>neither were Christianed.  So I guess the term is more offensive to atheists
>>than to members of other religions.
>>
>>Actually, "offensive" is probably much too strong -- it's a case for me that
>>there's just this slight element of discomfort and disturbance.
>>
>>Simply, I'm more comfortable with the term "given name" -- more accurate (if
>>one can use the term in a lexical context, and risk the genetic fallacy),
>>and carries less ideological baggage, therefore a "natural" (?) replacement.
>>
>>(Apparently, I have just been informed, the official term is "forename".)
>
>If "prénom" is good enough for the French (as I
>recall from filling out all those cartes
>d'identité), it should be good enough for us.
>The problem is that "forename" does sound a bit
>odd, and would probably lead to comments like "I
>only have three".  There's always "first name",
>which is perhaps more accurate than either
>"Christian" or "given" name for the likes of
>Tiger Woods, Mark Twain, or Cary Grant, ...

Or, I should have added, for Muhammad Ali.

(Sorry for having overlooked Judy Prince's
earlier nomination of "first name"; perhaps,
though, the thought is that we're looking for an
x such that
"first name":"last name"::"x name":"surname".)

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org