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Have you ever found it hard to describe someone to a friend, even though you are sure they would recognize the person if they saw them?
-"you know, Eric, from our philosophy class"
-"nope!"
This would be much easier if a person's name already encoded their physical appearance. (not to mention, names
would be easier to remember)
You could encode properties such as:
height
body type: fat/thin/average/muscular
outstanding features: nose? chin? ears? skin?
hair color / eye color / glasses?
eye shape
scruffiness / hairdo (change your name!)
age (be forced to change your name!)
or even non-visual but descriptive things such as voice pitch, accent, and shyness.
For political correctness, encoding "ugliness" may not be allowed. Skin color / race may be also be controversial. That being said, encoding gender in a name also causes bias.
I think all of the above info can be encoded into 16 bits. Using the phonetic system of English, a couple of syllables should be enough to describe basically everyone.
With a couple more syllables, we could make it sound almost natural! And given 5 syllables, we could probably make perfectly natural-sounding English names (although the encoding wouldn't be simple anymore).
Small! of course.
http://www.geocitie...other/surnames.html
[po, Apr 20 2005]
Kinda like Old Entish, where things are named by their attributes.
http://www.lotrlibr...anguages/entish.asp
There was a great inrush of those, burárum, those evileyed - blackhanded - bowlegged - flinthearted - clawfingered - foulbellied - bloodthirsty, morimaite - sincahonda, hoom, well, since you are hasty folk and their full name is as long as years of torment, those vermin of orcs. [RayfordSteele, Apr 20 2005]
[link]
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Don't even think about it. |
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But I wasn't born with this nose; it grew on me. |
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I heard a story recently about a lecturer who was asked by his new class how he remembered names. "I try to rhyme them with a physical characteristic", he told them. "For instance, what's your name?" he asked a girl on the front row. "Regina", she replied. Exeunt omnis, laughing. |
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a lot of english surnames developed like this - longman, shortass, redface etc. |
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sorry, I'm sure some sensible ones will come to mind later. |
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My parents are both dentists. They recognize people by their teeth. Say 'Sophie Rollins' to them, it means nothing. Say 'she's got a serious overbite and her lower left four is slightly discoloured, might be devivified' (love that word), and suddenly they know exactly who you mean... |
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\\shortass\\ Littlebottom. |
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In the North of England, Shufflebottom is not an uncommon name. I often wonder what physical characteristic brought about this moniker. |
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>Gusta< I am still waiting for an example before a toss in a bone or bun. Pick someone famous & "rename" them. |
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//Skin color / race may be also be controversial.// |
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This bothers me to no end! Why should it be controversial to refer to someone by their ethnicity? There's nothing wrong with being black or asian or white, etc. ... Just ask Michael Jackson, he'll tell you there's no difference. This could easily turn into a full-blown rant but I'll spare you all out of the kindness of my heart. |
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By the way, [gustavo], what would happen in the case of identical twins or triplets? |
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This was done to some degree in the past. My oldest known relative was named “Bertha with the Big Feet”. |
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Forget political correctness. The surnames in Cuba are so common that everyone has a discriptive nickname that they go by, and some of them are quite horrid. |
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Fashion, wardrobe, and image consultants would speak in some awful jargon, combining names and attributes in some assemblage like geek code. |
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Oh my god, isn't that 5--O+S+K+++? Did you hear she's shacking up with 5+O---L$K?!S? |
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how about tallabigbumpead for that? |
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My user-name already describes me, hehehe. |
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"Flynn" means ruddy faced, and I'm fairly red-faced most of the time. "Mark" means "war-like," and I like explosions and Bruce Willis as much as the next guy. "Not" is something I put on my name to be jerk. |
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I'm a warlike, red-faced jerk. This system is working already. |
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I should have given more thought to naming my son,
Paul (which means "Little"); he's 6' 4". |
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