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Comment by DenisM | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat related: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names [1]

[1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

From that, the scariest one is: "People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points." (i.e. some names are not doable in Unicode)

My god man, if you can't be done in Unicode, you'll have to live in a hut somewhere as 'the internets does not want you'. Might be an interesting idea for those who truly want off the grid, as they can't be 'on' the grid in the first place!

I would actually love to see an example of every list item he's presented. Well, except maybe the last one, might be disingenuous to ask for that.

https://shinesolutions.com/2018/01/08/falsehoods-programmers...

Last one still doesn't make sense as soon as you introduce anyone who doesn't already know someone from the "tribe" (or whatever) or isn't related to anyone.

You can't describe yourself as "my mothers oldest son" if I have no idea who your mother is. Or rather you can, but thats literally meaningless. How do these people even get someones attention? Is it always "hey you!", since you can't ask your mothers sisters oldest cousin to pass the meat at the camp fire if you have non family memebers present.

The Machiguenga [1] are one example of a people using that system [2]. They apparently have no problem using the personal names given to them by Spanish speakers, but do not usually name themselves, instead preferring kinship terms. They probably don't (or didn't) have much contact with outsiders, which makes it possible to know enough about everyone you might talk about to accurately describe them without a name.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiguenga

[2] https://books.google.com/books?id=_JXC70OnxEgC&pg=PA9

We do something similar when we say “hello Cousin” at a family event or address our parents (dad and mom).

If your community is small enough (100 people) it could easily be applied to every type of relationship, at the exclusion of individual name.

Also note that in many languages there is or used to be a dedicated word for very specific relationship to someone, with different word if the relationship is via the mother, the father, etc.

In India, in my language Punjabi, we have different words for

Sister of mother

Sister of father

Elder brother of father

Younger brother of father

Wife of elder brother of father

Wife of younger brother of father

Brother of mother

Wife of brother of mother

Son of brother

Daughter of brother

Son of sister

Daughter of sister

Husband of sister

Wife of younger brother

Wife of elder brother

Sister of wife

Brother of wife

Husband of sister of wife

Wife of brother of wife

Brother of father of husband or wife

Sister of father of husband or wife

Wife of son of brother

Wife of son of sister

Husband of daughter of brother

Husband of daughter of sister

In English, most of these are Uncle, Aunt, Cousin, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, mother-in-law, father-in-law, nephew, niece.

In Japanese, there are also distinctions like these, but only in characters, not words. For example:

- 叔母さん and 伯母さん both read おばさん (obasan) and mean, respectively, younger sister of father or mother and elder sister of father or mother.

- 叔父さん and 伯父さん both read おじさん (ojisan) and mean, respectively, younger brother of father or mother and elder brother of father or mother.

- お母さん and お義母さん both read おかあさん (okaasan) and mean, respectively, mother and mother in law. etc.

These distinctions are imported from Chinese, where 叔母 and 伯母 are pronounced differently, although nowadays 婶婶 is much more common than 叔母 and both only refer to the wife of the father's younger brother, while 伯母 is an older brother's wife.

There are many more different terms for various fine distinctions of relatedness, but I only know those I had a need to use, and when I asked a Chinese friend for help, he told me that he can't remember all of them either.

Nice to learn that Bulgarian is not the only language that is so precise about relations. However, many of these words are disappearing from usage as families get smaller and younger people don't learn them.

It may be a bit fantastical, but I think one example is the time that Prince changed his name. See https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36107590 for background.

Did he change it legally? I don’t know, but for the spirit of the linked list, it probably doesn’t matter: He says his name is now something else, and so it is, and I doubt it’s in the Unicode tables!

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