In article , toypup says...

On 7 Jun 2007 07:53:36 -0700, Banty wrote:

In article , toypup says...

On Thu, 7 Jun 2007 11:01:57 +0000 (UTC), enigma wrote:

JohnZhang wrote in
ups.com:

What do you think among these 3 choices? thanks for any
input!

http://www.thepollspace.com/polls.ph...=75&category=0

did you mean to use Nicolas, Steven (Stephen) or Robert? i
certainly hope so, because actually naming the poor child with
a diminuative is unkind. it's hard enough to get along in the
adult world without being saddled with a 'baby nickname' as
your given name.

Maybe the guy doesn't know English and those names sound fine in his
language?

And if we proposed Sasha or Dima for a boy child, and a Russian speaker object
that those are diminuitives for real names, would you accept as a defense "oh
well, we don't know Russian and those names sound fine in our language"?

It's a perfectly valid objection.

Banty

Yes, in their own country. In our country, the child would not feel
saddled with a diminuitive, because the majority of the people would not
know it is a diminuitive.

SIL has a foreign name which sounds fine here. When she went to the
country from which it origniates, the natives were puzzled, because it
would not be something anyone there would want to name their own child.
IL's found it amusing, because they were trying to give her a name related
to her roots. SIL has never felt saddled with that name, neither as an
adult nor as a child.

But it's a smaller and smaller world. I don't think it's a good idea to plead
ignorance, even ignorance of most folks in one's locale, in using a name from a
different culture. Even one's own ancestral culture.

Although the case you mention sounds more like maybe it was a matter of using a
rather old-fasioned or outmoded name or version of it... ?? If not, (or even if
so) see, something was lost in her being able to connect to her country of
ancestral origin because of this. Knowledge is a good thing, y'know.

Banty