3 ms·

Even in Iceland, it's still used primarily in the same way that it's used everywhere else... disambiguation. Which "Taylor", which "Björk", since given names ar

Even in Iceland, it's still used primarily in the same way that it's used everywhere else... disambiguation. Which "Taylor", which "Björk", since given names are reused so often there are typically are many Taylors and many Björks. That their phone book chooses to use a different name for sorting doesn't change this, and given the nature of the second name, it would hardly be more efficient to use one or the other.

amiga386 2y ago
True, and even then, there are currently 7 Björk Guðmundsdóttirs according to their online phonebook... as you might expect https://en.ja.is/?q=bj%C3%B6rk%20gu%C3%B0mundsd%C3%B3ttir&people_scope=true https://en.ja.is/?q=bj%C3%B6rk%20gu%C3%B0mundsd%C3%B3ttir&pe... Obviously, there are a lot more John Smiths...
kridsdale3 2y ago
At least for those two women, disambiguation is not necessary. Checking Google.com autocomplete, Bjork is returned for the substring "bjo" and Swift is returned for the substring "t". Making her the eponymous global entity for that entire letter. Her father should renaming himself Scott Taylorsdad.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  >At least for those two women, disambiguation is not necessary. This seems unlikely. Taylor is a popular-enough millennial name that there must be many women (and more than a few men) named that. If we all ran around using only first/given names, we would certainly discover the need for disambiguation. Even Bjork is nowhere near unique. You didn't think they were the only people to have those names, did you? Disambiguation isn't about whether Google returns the most popular search for a given name, it's about what you need when you're not looking for the most popular target. This is plainly obvious, and a little disturbing that you could find cause to argue about it. The redditification of HN marches onward inevitably.
- munch117 2y ago
  That says more about how Google has been personalised to you than about Icelandic phonebooks. By the way, you are misspelling the name. The dots are not decoration, it's a different letter. Edit: But I guess you know that, and o is just easier to type.
  - mr_toad 2y ago
    It’s not a different letter, it’s the same letter with a diacritic. It might be incorrect when writing in Icelandic but in English it’s no more incorrect than using cafe instead of café.
    - Symbiote 2y ago
      In that case, the tail on the J is just a decoration of an I, and we can write Iack Iones.
    - thaumasiotes 2y ago
      munch117 is right; it's a different letter. Compare French é and è, different vowels with different spellings, to pinyin é and è, identical vowels with different diacritically-marked tones. The French vowels don't have diacritics any more than i and j do. That's a graphemic definition of "letter". There is an alternative, collation order, but in Icelandic that will also tell you that o and ö are two different letters, and ö sorts after þ while o sorts before it.
      - simiones 2y ago
        The French definitely don't consider those to be different letters - they are e with an acute accent and a grave accent respectively; an accent is a type of diacritic mark. There's also a circumflex accent in French, and several other vowels can take accents. They even have two other diacritic marks, the trema (two dots) and the cedilla. This is apparently different in Icelandic, where indeed ö is considered a separate letter, not an o with an umlaut/two dots. But this is simply a convention of Icelandic typography - German for example also uses ö in certain words, but they do consider it an o with an umlaut.

amiga386 2y ago

True, and even then, there are currently 7 Björk Guðmundsdóttirs according to their online phonebook... as you might expect https://en.ja.is/?q=bj%C3%B6rk%20gu%C3%B0mundsd%C3%B3ttir&people_scope=true https://en.ja.is/?q=bj%C3%B6rk%20gu%C3%B0mundsd%C3%B3ttir&pe... Obviously, there are a lot more John Smiths...

kridsdale3 2y ago

At least for those two women, disambiguation is not necessary. Checking Google.com autocomplete, Bjork is returned for the substring "bjo" and Swift is returned for the substring "t". Making her the eponymous global entity for that entire letter. Her father should renaming himself Scott Taylorsdad.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
>At least for those two women, disambiguation is not necessary. This seems unlikely. Taylor is a popular-enough millennial name that there must be many women (and more than a few men) named that. If we all ran around using only first/given names, we would certainly discover the need for disambiguation. Even Bjork is nowhere near unique. You didn't think they were the only people to have those names, did you? Disambiguation isn't about whether Google returns the most popular search for a given name, it's about what you need when you're not looking for the most popular target. This is plainly obvious, and a little disturbing that you could find cause to argue about it. The redditification of HN marches onward inevitably.
munch117 2y ago
That says more about how Google has been personalised to you than about Icelandic phonebooks. By the way, you are misspelling the name. The dots are not decoration, it's a different letter. Edit: But I guess you know that, and o is just easier to type.
- mr_toad 2y ago
  It’s not a different letter, it’s the same letter with a diacritic. It might be incorrect when writing in Icelandic but in English it’s no more incorrect than using cafe instead of café.
  - Symbiote 2y ago
    In that case, the tail on the J is just a decoration of an I, and we can write Iack Iones.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    munch117 is right; it's a different letter. Compare French é and è, different vowels with different spellings, to pinyin é and è, identical vowels with different diacritically-marked tones. The French vowels don't have diacritics any more than i and j do. That's a graphemic definition of "letter". There is an alternative, collation order, but in Icelandic that will also tell you that o and ö are two different letters, and ö sorts after þ while o sorts before it.
    - simiones 2y ago
      The French definitely don't consider those to be different letters - they are e with an acute accent and a grave accent respectively; an accent is a type of diacritic mark. There's also a circumflex accent in French, and several other vowels can take accents. They even have two other diacritic marks, the trema (two dots) and the cedilla. This is apparently different in Icelandic, where indeed ö is considered a separate letter, not an o with an umlaut/two dots. But this is simply a convention of Icelandic typography - German for example also uses ö in certain words, but they do consider it an o with an umlaut.