4 ms·

My son is named Soren after Kierkegaard. I was a Theology/Philosophy Major and there isn't a single theologian/philosopher that means as much to me. I figure i

My son is named Soren after Kierkegaard. I was a Theology/Philosophy Major and there isn't a single theologian/philosopher that means as much to me. I figure if I named my son after him he will have to read some of his writing and POSSIBLY gain some thoughts that lead to other thoughts that he will always hold dear.

59nadir 9y ago
Sören/Søren or Soren? They're not the same.
- mborch 9y ago
  But they are... Unless you want to be pedantic.
  - 59nadir 9y ago
    They're not pronounced at all the same, no. Naming your child Soren after Sören makes about as much sense as naming a child Ålän after Alan. You do realize that the "o" and "ö" are different letters representing different sounds, right? Edit: As a dane you should realize how stupid it sounds for you to argue that Soren and Sören are the same, both with swedish and danish pronunciation. It's not at all being pedantic. Do you also think that ч is a 4 and н is a h? The only thing that "ö" and "o" have in common is that they're vowels.
    - 3131s 9y ago
      I mean, neither the letter ø nor the sounds /œ/ or /ø/ exist in English, so presuming the GP lives in an English speaking country they probably didn't want to curse their kid with a name that nobody could pronounce. So, as has been an American custom for a long time, they modified the name slightly by substituting out a visually similar character with vaguely similar phonological characteristics (the /ɔ/ in "Soren" is rounded, open-mid like /œ/). And as they say, it's the thought that counts!
      - baldfat 9y ago
        Also it is common in English and most other countries to have different spellings for the same name. In English it is called Anglicisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglicisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglicisation Jesus was never called Jesus (probably). His name was Yehoshua (Joshua but Hebrew has no J) but when translated to Greek we get Jesus. In French Jacob is pronounced James due to some name meaning of James being having a limp. The New Testament Book called James in English is Jakob in Greek. These things happen for a thousand times. Also I went to college in Minneapolis and Swedish is used as frequently as Spanish is in most Northeast cities. I met dozens of Sorens and none of them pronounced it differently.
        3131s 9y ago
        Ha, I am from Minneapolis and knew a few Sorens as well.
        59nadir 9y ago
        The argument about anglicized names usually works because there are lots of shared names by way of shared religion. Иван can be anglicized as John because it's an important name in the foundation of both western and eastern european religion, not because someone just decided they seem similar. > I met dozens of Sorens and none of them pronounced it differently. And none of them were named the same as Søren Kierkegaard, being named Soren and all. Being from MN, by the way, you would think actually naming your kid the same as the person you're naming them after wasn't such a big deal, considering there's lots of scandinavian heritage there. I think the big takeaway here is that americans, for all their talk of heritage and mixed culture are still super resistant to actually embracing and getting things from other cultures right. In general I'd say native English speakers are extremely lazy when it comes to other languages. This assumption that you can remove umlauts and diacritics from letters and everything will be fine is everywhere in US media and it's pretty ridiculous. Both umlauts and diacritics specifically mark a difference in pronunciation. That's their entire purpose.
        baldfat 9y ago
B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
> if I named my son after him he will have to read Why am I reminded of Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue"? ( https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnnycash/aboynamedsue.html https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnnycash/aboynamedsue.html )

59nadir 9y ago

Sören/Søren or Soren? They're not the same.

mborch 9y ago
But they are... Unless you want to be pedantic.
- 59nadir 9y ago
  They're not pronounced at all the same, no. Naming your child Soren after Sören makes about as much sense as naming a child Ålän after Alan. You do realize that the "o" and "ö" are different letters representing different sounds, right? Edit: As a dane you should realize how stupid it sounds for you to argue that Soren and Sören are the same, both with swedish and danish pronunciation. It's not at all being pedantic. Do you also think that ч is a 4 and н is a h? The only thing that "ö" and "o" have in common is that they're vowels.
  - 3131s 9y ago
    I mean, neither the letter ø nor the sounds /œ/ or /ø/ exist in English, so presuming the GP lives in an English speaking country they probably didn't want to curse their kid with a name that nobody could pronounce. So, as has been an American custom for a long time, they modified the name slightly by substituting out a visually similar character with vaguely similar phonological characteristics (the /ɔ/ in "Soren" is rounded, open-mid like /œ/). And as they say, it's the thought that counts!
    - baldfat 9y ago
      Also it is common in English and most other countries to have different spellings for the same name. In English it is called Anglicisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglicisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglicisation Jesus was never called Jesus (probably). His name was Yehoshua (Joshua but Hebrew has no J) but when translated to Greek we get Jesus. In French Jacob is pronounced James due to some name meaning of James being having a limp. The New Testament Book called James in English is Jakob in Greek. These things happen for a thousand times. Also I went to college in Minneapolis and Swedish is used as frequently as Spanish is in most Northeast cities. I met dozens of Sorens and none of them pronounced it differently.
      - 3131s 9y ago
        Ha, I am from Minneapolis and knew a few Sorens as well.
      - 59nadir 9y ago
        The argument about anglicized names usually works because there are lots of shared names by way of shared religion. Иван can be anglicized as John because it's an important name in the foundation of both western and eastern european religion, not because someone just decided they seem similar. > I met dozens of Sorens and none of them pronounced it differently. And none of them were named the same as Søren Kierkegaard, being named Soren and all. Being from MN, by the way, you would think actually naming your kid the same as the person you're naming them after wasn't such a big deal, considering there's lots of scandinavian heritage there. I think the big takeaway here is that americans, for all their talk of heritage and mixed culture are still super resistant to actually embracing and getting things from other cultures right. In general I'd say native English speakers are extremely lazy when it comes to other languages. This assumption that you can remove umlauts and diacritics from letters and everything will be fine is everywhere in US media and it's pretty ridiculous. Both umlauts and diacritics specifically mark a difference in pronunciation. That's their entire purpose.
        baldfat 9y ago

B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago

> if I named my son after him he will have to read Why am I reminded of Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue"? ( https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnnycash/aboynamedsue.html https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnnycash/aboynamedsue.html )