name regret

[Michael Newman]

Coda /s/ in dominican Spanish is not categorically elided, but it is mostly. In general in Spanish, /s/ cannot be an onset in a consonant cluster, thus the famous epenthetic /e/ is added to make an /esCV/ structure. Putting the two rules together, you get the following derivation: 1) epenthetic e rule and 2) s-deletion rule:

 sCV—> esCV  —> eCV

Now, if you imagine a clerk (or father) with very low literacy, they could read an <SCV> combination as simply equivalent to an <ECV> combination.

I think the esdrújula example is not as pertinent.

Of course, the story is what Sdelmira told me. It could have been that her father wrote it wrong, or that it is a spelling that in fact is used elsewhere in the DR or that it is kind of a conscious phonological joke. In fact, I just googled, that spelling and I got 627 hits. My Sdelmira is not alone.

That said, Sdelmira  as well as being a great student was not the most oddly named person I've met in my teaching in NYC. That honor goes to Smelly, who was a student from Pakistan  in an ESL class in an NYC public school class I was sitting in. The teacher said her dad got mad when they told him it was a problematic name. The teachers at her high school called her Smiley, but I thought Shelly would have been a better resolution. I'm imagine she figured out a solution for herself as she got older.


Michael Newman
Associate Professor of Linguistics
Queens College/CUNY
michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu



On Oct 14, 2011, at 7:34 PM, Ronald Butters wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ronald Butters <ronbutters at AOL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: name regret
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'm confused. What does "homophonous spelling" mean????
>
> /#esd/ seems to be a permitted initial sequence in Spanish (though rare; =
> _esdr=FAjulo_ is the only word I know of); to that extent, "Esdelmira" =
> would be a normal interpretation of "Sdelmira," but "Edelmira" would =
> surely have sounded OK to a municipal clerk if that is what the parents =
> said--and I can't see why a clerk would have written down a =
> bizarre-seeming, phonetactically alien "Sdelmira" if someone had spoken =
> "Edelmira" to the clerk.
>
> On Oct 14, 2011, at 12:45 PM, Michael Newman wrote:
>
>> I had a Dominican student once who told me that her name, Sdelimira, =
> "violates phonotactic constraints."  (It was supposed to have been =
> "Edelmira," which in Dominican spanish would be a homophonous spelling =
> with Sdelmira. She blamed the municipal clerk. )
>> =20
>> =20
>> =20
>> Michael Newman
>> Associate Professor of Linguistics
>> Queens College/CUNY
>> michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu
>> =20
>> =20
>> =20
>> On Oct 14, 2011, at 6:32 PM, Ronald Butters wrote:
>> =20
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header =
> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Ronald Butters <ronbutters at AOL.COM>
>>> Subject:      Re: name regret
>>> =
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> -----
>>> =20
>>> What percent regret the dorky name that they gave their children? =
> (E.g., RONALD REAGAN JONES might cause his parents to have deep remorse =
> for inflicting such an uncool name on one who grew up to be a trendy =
> professor of literature at Yale.)
>>> On Oct 14, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>> =20
>>>> Seems like this should be "Namers' Remorse".
>>>> =20
>>>> LH
>>>> =20
>>>> On Oct 14, 2011, at 8:01 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>> =20
>>>>> Eight percent of U.S. parents regret the "cool" name they gave =
> baby:
>>>>> =20
>>>>> =
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/10/baby-name-mistakes-tenth-_n_10032=
> 79.html
>>>>> =20
>>>>> =20
>>>>> JL
>>>>> =20
>>>>> --
>>>>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the =
> truth."
>>>>> =20
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>>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>> =20
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>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> =20
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