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

[Mark Mandel]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 4:29 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> Larry wrote:
>
> "The problem is that "forename" does sound a bit
> odd, and would probably lead to comments like 'I
> only have three'."
>
> Aren't we talking about the *police*, here?
>

Yes, but we're also talking about onomastic groups that may include a large
number of non-native English speakers. It's not hard to see how "Forename,
please?" could cause an L2 speaker (or even L1 from a different community,
like the US) to think "four names" or "fourth name" if they weren't familiar
with the word.

m a m
"My forebears came from Flanders. Three of them, anyway. Who's been sleeping
in *my* porridge?" (Michael Flanders in "At the Drop of a Hat")

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