"Find" in Excel would be a pretty poor replacement for a database search feature, were it intended as such. (It's not even a very good implementation of a fiiind in document feature. It is the weakest link in the chain that is Excel.)
Here is a thought, LB -- he might have hear the phrase "relational database" somewhere and not understood it, and it was hanging around in his brain wanting to be uttered -- when it saw an opportunity it pounced.
Also a possibility. The information in question was a list of stuff -- keeping it in a word document would have been sufficiently searchable for any likely purposes.
The following is not in the least any sort of criticism; I start off with that so there's no misunderstanding. It's an I'm-just-saying.
I distinctly recall seeing you deliver this anecdote in a blog comment in the past. Like I indicated, there's absolutely no reason you shouldn't turn it into a post, and every reason you should. I'm-just-saying I spied with my little eye.
I can't figure out what the point of having a Hugo category of "Best Interactive Video Game," rather than "Best Video Game," is, either, obviously. Probably the ballot is too short and needs more words. Or it sounds more pretentious. Or that there hadn't been enough pomposity to date. Beats me.
Though as stupid Worldcon committee decisions in history go, this one isn't even a contender for top fifty, or likely even top one hundred.
Thanks, of course, for the link.
Count your blessings that the partner didn't ask you to put it in a magic database. Those are the bestest kinds.
(Googles a little) So I have, at ObWi. It's annoying: while I have an excellent memory for information, I have really no memory at all for my own life -- I'll happily tell the same joke to the same people for years, or until they ask me to stop.
I do the same thing, LB. I can never remember who I told what. I'm just worried that I'll blog/comment the same anecdote slightly differently in two places because of my crappy memory and then be accused of being James Frey.
"I'll happily tell the same joke to the same people for years, or until they ask me to stop."
Me, too, with anecdotes. I don't do jokes, but I have a limited supply of anecdotes, and crap memory as to who I've told which ones to. This is but one thing in a long list of things my memory is crap at; anything with numbers in it is another broad category; anything time-related that I can't tie to another memory whose time/date/year I can pin down, is yet another.
"(a/k/a that horrible process by which we turn into our parents)."
I'm 47; I finished the process quite some time ago, save for the having children part, and reproducing some of their worst flaws. And I'm a couple of inches taller than either were, and far better tempered than my mother and far less crazy than my father. But I compensate for that with new and original flaws.
"Oh, I wasn't apologizing, just tipping you all off to the sort of thing you're going to be suffering through."
Be sure to post this sentence in a few other threads.
Hey, somebody accused me of writing something "Frey-like" just last month, the first week the big Frey news was breaking. People are very unoriginal in their accusations (it was over my saying completely true, incidentally). But, see, there, too, I got to something first.
:-)
Soon it will be revealed that I am not a tubby, short, 47-year-old bearded secular Jewish guy who grew up obsessed with science fiction, but a clever 13-year-old six foot three gay Navajo who has been faking it. No wonder my IP address is in Colorado!
Although it seems redundant, I remember hearing that phrase, "searchable database" all the time. I think what it was was a way of describing why things were being put into databases, say at roll-outs and staff meetings. As in "once this stuff is in a searchable database, we'll be able to recover it instantly..." So your Partner must have assumed logically that there was such a thing as a non-searchable database.
On Farber's point, the literary history of the future, providing there is such a thing, is going to have to be timed to the minute, to trace the spread of an idea and the speed it gets picked up. How wonderful for the grad student who finds a reference minutes earlier, in a different tone of voice, on a comment thread no one ever saw before. Glory!
21: Completely, especially since I do have such a rotten memory. The funny bit of a situation will stick, but I have to reconstruct the surrounding facts rather than actually recalling them. (This, among many other personal flaws, makes filling in my timesheets at the end of each month an adventure in creativity.)
This, among many other personal flaws, makes filling in my timesheets at the end of each month an adventure in creativity.
If Rumsfeld and his merry band had the brains God gave a gopher, they'd just require recalcitrant prisoners at Gitmo to keep timesheets. Organ failure, bah!
Your firm doesn't have one of those fancy computer-based clocks that do it automatically? I'm told that you can click them on and off so that nobody's charged when you go to the bathroom.
I'm actually not sure if this firm has that feature on its software. I've tried to use it in the past, thougj, and what happens is that I forget to switch it to a new matter when I finish what I'm doing. My timekeeping is hopeless.
(That's one of the major things that makes me fantasize about switching jobs -- the idea of not having to account for my time in six minute chunks is so incredibly appealing.)
Could easily be -- I'm on my third firm by now. I started at a giant firm founded by the editor of Paris Review's uncle, moved on to a teeny little litigation boutique, and ended up back at another behemoth.
Fourth or fifth, depending how you count. Big firm (by local standards), another big firm, small firm in another city, back here to small firm of my own, then merged back into where I started. Slowly getting the idea that maybe it's what I'm doing, not where I'm doing it. My wife went to work for the feds last year, and while she still works almost as hard (she's like that), getting rid of the timesheets and related fun made a major difference in her state of mind.
large corporations want their own general corporate litigators to oversee the general corporate litigators at the large behemoth firms they hire to handle various corporate litigations.
But it involves more overseeing than litigation from what I can tell.
If the uncle of the Paris Review's founder was on the franternal side, and is still a name partner, I know what firm you're talking about, but it isn't mine.
Once I get my finances in strong enough shape to handle the pay cut, I do have my eye on the NYC Corporation Counsel's office. I've heard good things about working there.
I just need to figure out who else wants a general commercial litigator other than law firms.
Insurance companies, especially if you're the kind of person who finds coverage issues interesting. Government, if you can live with what they pay. The feds aren't bad by most standards, but nowhere close to big-firm private practice. Maybe some in-house counsel positions, depending on industry.
If I knew more legal jargon I'd finish this. When I worked at a litigation support company I actually put something like this -- making use of various internal protocol terms, ending with "simplifying nothing" -- up on the dry-erase board near the cubicles. I don't think the management ever noticed it.
39: yes. That's more or less what my wife was doing. You can search all (I think) of the federal jobs for which the general public can apply at usajobs.opm.gov.
I know someone who did corporate law (mostly Ks for VC-backed companies) at medium-big Boston firm. She has since gone in-house for a subsidiary of a mutual fund company. She's doing compliance work. I don't think that she loves it, but it's not the hell that ML was, and I don't think she has time-sheets.
If the uncle of the Paris Review's founder was on the franternal side, and is still a name partner
Well, he's dead quite a while, but he's the second name in the firm's name. And corporations do want a certain number of commercial litigators, but not anything like as many as they want transactional lawyers.
I think government is the long term plan, but I need to get my finances in better shape -- college savings, paying off debt -- before I can handle the pay cut. Until then, I'll just whine all day.
40: See, that's why firms in a lot of places are smarter than they are here. Around here, the economy was fairly slow through most of the 90s, and even as it's picked up, associate compensation has stayed relatively low. As a result, people in the 4-7 year range who are profitable for the firms still have outside options that pay somewhere in the same range as the private practice jobs. If they stick around and make partner, it starts going up pretty fast. It seems to me that they'd be better off paying mid-level to senior associates enough to have some golden handcuffs effect, then slow down the growth rate for the junior partners. Doesn't matter a lot to me personally--coming back from outside, I'm on a separate track--but I can't understand why money doesn't come to mind as a possible solution to associate attrition.
Now if we just had a searchable database of the litigation department of the firm in question for the last few years, we could out LB. But that wouldn't be nice.
Several things, but the main one is that I'm highly skeptical that any of the Navajo "names" would actually be used in any kind of Navajo context -- they're mostly just words, and many of them are kinship terms with the first person singular possessive prefix (shi- ; look how many of these are on the list). I strongly doubt anyone is named "My Sister"; it's more like whoever compiled the list just looked through a Navajo word list or something.
And that leads to a bigger problem, which is that I don't actually know what a list of Navajo names would look like because I've never known the Navajo names of any of the (many) Navajos I've known in my life -- they're generally for ritual purposes only, and not used in daily life. I doubt whoever compiled that list would know better, especially given the improbability of many of the names (see previous paragraph).
Yes, there's often a distinction between call names and registered names (as the AKC would say). In this country there were names like Slim, Lefty, Dusty, Tex. I know a guy whose name is Tiny (he's about 6'6" and mebbe 300 lbs, and that's what he is called, by himself and others). I lived with a guy whose papers said he was Wizzer of Yardcastle, but my father called him George. My brother and I sometimes referred to him as our little black brother. He was a standard poodle, but counted as a family member.
There are US people's registered names such as Charity, Chastity, Rose, June, and Amber, all of which have common meanings.
My own first name, according to my brother, translates as "strange kid nobody wants but the police brought him one day and asked us to watch him so we let him stay here." Of course, his informal name, both as a term of address and for references, was My Idiot Brother.
There's probably someone on the Fort Defiance plateau right now thinking "LizardBreath is a pretty weird name. I wonder what that'd translate to in Navajo."
It pisses me off because these aren't Navajo names, which is what they're being advertised as; that is, I am assuming this list was posted for the benefit of people who want a Native American name for their little white baby (for whatever reason), and I think they're being misled. I have no problem with a parent using one of these names -- many are quite mellifluous, and unusual, and other advantageous qualities in names -- but they should realize that they aren't the kinds of names actual Navajos have but rather words from the Navajo language that sound nice to English-speaking people. There are also issues of appropriation of cultural property that I see no need to go into further.
Thank you, that's clearer. I guess when I saw the phrase "Navajo name meaning ..." I was thinking of Navajo as a language. In the same way I'd read "Slim: English; meaning thin or plump person" without actually expecting an Englishman to name his son Slim.
But I can see how it is misleading. I simply thought it was superficial and unreliable, and I've certainly never run into Navajos with names like those. Which I suppose should piss me off, too. I saw Alameda on the list, and I always thought that was a Spanish word.
A look at the list of members of the Navajo Council shows the following names: Evelyn , Larry , Eddie , George, Pete, Andy, Lorenzo, Harriett, Lorenzo, Kee, Leo, Mel, Omer, Sampson, Willie, Nelson, Richard, Alice, Katherine ... and so on. I assume they're all Navajo, to be on the Council.
That's the link to the Navajo Council. I didn't make it clear.
I guess I also didn't really think anyone was going to actually pick a name from that list and inflict it on a child. Or that anyone posted the list for that purpose. I suppose that's my own naivete. Their list of unusual names is also seriously weird.
I don't know what to think about cultural appropriation, but I'm glad I don't have to try to remember how to spell LizardBreath in Navajo. Being incompetent in one language is enough for me.
I call it my memory. It's write-only (WOM).
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 9:03 AM
Michael, continued use of your brain may subject you to a patent-infringement lawsuit.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 9:11 AM
I'd claim priority of invention, but you know where I stored the pointer to those records.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 9:19 AM
I'm guessing the non-searchable database the partner was thinking of was one o' them Excel spreadsheets.
Posted by Matt #3 | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 9:34 AM
I'd call it a circular file.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 9:34 AM
I'm guessing the non-searchable database the partner was thinking of was one o' them Excel spreadsheets.
Ctrl-F
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 9:37 AM
"Find" in Excel would be a pretty poor replacement for a database search feature, were it intended as such. (It's not even a very good implementation of a fiiind in document feature. It is the weakest link in the chain that is Excel.)
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 9:40 AM
To this day, I don't know what he was thinking. I suppose a spreadsheet is a possibility, but that'd be searchable too.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 9:42 AM
Um, /dev/null, right?
Definitely not searchable.
Posted by arthegall | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 10:36 AM
Microsoft Access
Posted by fiend | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 10:38 AM
10 -- funny.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 10:43 AM
And in fact what I had been planning to use. Maybe that's what he meant: "Whatever you do, don't use Access!"
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 10:48 AM
Here is a thought, LB -- he might have hear the phrase "relational database" somewhere and not understood it, and it was hanging around in his brain wanting to be uttered -- when it saw an opportunity it pounced.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 10:55 AM
Also a possibility. The information in question was a list of stuff -- keeping it in a word document would have been sufficiently searchable for any likely purposes.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 11:00 AM
The following is not in the least any sort of criticism; I start off with that so there's no misunderstanding. It's an I'm-just-saying.
I distinctly recall seeing you deliver this anecdote in a blog comment in the past. Like I indicated, there's absolutely no reason you shouldn't turn it into a post, and every reason you should. I'm-just-saying I spied with my little eye.
I can't figure out what the point of having a Hugo category of "Best Interactive Video Game," rather than "Best Video Game," is, either, obviously. Probably the ballot is too short and needs more words. Or it sounds more pretentious. Or that there hadn't been enough pomposity to date. Beats me.
Though as stupid Worldcon committee decisions in history go, this one isn't even a contender for top fifty, or likely even top one hundred.
Thanks, of course, for the link.
Count your blessings that the partner didn't ask you to put it in a magic database. Those are the bestest kinds.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 11:24 AM
Though as stupid Worldcon committee decisions in history go, this one isn't even a contender for top fifty, or likely even top one hundred.
Absolutely. Number 1 would have to be the decision to fake their accoumting.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 11:34 AM
(Googles a little) So I have, at ObWi. It's annoying: while I have an excellent memory for information, I have really no memory at all for my own life -- I'll happily tell the same joke to the same people for years, or until they ask me to stop.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 11:35 AM
Don't worry, it's just a sign of advancing age (a/k/a that horrible process by which we turn into our parents).
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 12:26 PM
But we're different people! And we liked the anecdote!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 12:35 PM
Oh, I wasn't apologizing, just tipping you all off to the sort of thing you're going to be suffering through.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 12:40 PM
I do the same thing, LB. I can never remember who I told what. I'm just worried that I'll blog/comment the same anecdote slightly differently in two places because of my crappy memory and then be accused of being James Frey.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 12:43 PM
"I'll happily tell the same joke to the same people for years, or until they ask me to stop."
Me, too, with anecdotes. I don't do jokes, but I have a limited supply of anecdotes, and crap memory as to who I've told which ones to. This is but one thing in a long list of things my memory is crap at; anything with numbers in it is another broad category; anything time-related that I can't tie to another memory whose time/date/year I can pin down, is yet another.
"(a/k/a that horrible process by which we turn into our parents)."
I'm 47; I finished the process quite some time ago, save for the having children part, and reproducing some of their worst flaws. And I'm a couple of inches taller than either were, and far better tempered than my mother and far less crazy than my father. But I compensate for that with new and original flaws.
"Oh, I wasn't apologizing, just tipping you all off to the sort of thing you're going to be suffering through."
Be sure to post this sentence in a few other threads.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 12:45 PM
I think it's allowed to repeat the same anecdote in the comment thread of one blog, and then as a main post on another blog. I do it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 12:50 PM
"...and then be accused of being James Frey...."
Hey, somebody accused me of writing something "Frey-like" just last month, the first week the big Frey news was breaking. People are very unoriginal in their accusations (it was over my saying completely true, incidentally). But, see, there, too, I got to something first.
:-)
Soon it will be revealed that I am not a tubby, short, 47-year-old bearded secular Jewish guy who grew up obsessed with science fiction, but a clever 13-year-old six foot three gay Navajo who has been faking it. No wonder my IP address is in Colorado!
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 12:56 PM
a clever 13-year-old six foot three gay Navajo
Gary's real name is Sike.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:00 PM
I think it's allowed to repeat the same anecdote in the comment thread of one blog, and then as a main post on another blog. I do it.
And there you have it. Can't get much more mainstream than B.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:04 PM
Although it seems redundant, I remember hearing that phrase, "searchable database" all the time. I think what it was was a way of describing why things were being put into databases, say at roll-outs and staff meetings. As in "once this stuff is in a searchable database, we'll be able to recover it instantly..." So your Partner must have assumed logically that there was such a thing as a non-searchable database.
On Farber's point, the literary history of the future, providing there is such a thing, is going to have to be timed to the minute, to trace the spread of an idea and the speed it gets picked up. How wonderful for the grad student who finds a reference minutes earlier, in a different tone of voice, on a comment thread no one ever saw before. Glory!
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:07 PM
21: Completely, especially since I do have such a rotten memory. The funny bit of a situation will stick, but I have to reconstruct the surrounding facts rather than actually recalling them. (This, among many other personal flaws, makes filling in my timesheets at the end of each month an adventure in creativity.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:09 PM
This, among many other personal flaws, makes filling in my timesheets at the end of each month an adventure in creativity.
If Rumsfeld and his merry band had the brains God gave a gopher, they'd just require recalcitrant prisoners at Gitmo to keep timesheets. Organ failure, bah!
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:15 PM
Your firm doesn't have one of those fancy computer-based clocks that do it automatically? I'm told that you can click them on and off so that nobody's charged when you go to the bathroom.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:31 PM
You say that like it's a good thing.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:35 PM
I'm actually not sure if this firm has that feature on its software. I've tried to use it in the past, thougj, and what happens is that I forget to switch it to a new matter when I finish what I'm doing. My timekeeping is hopeless.
(That's one of the major things that makes me fantasize about switching jobs -- the idea of not having to account for my time in six minute chunks is so incredibly appealing.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:36 PM
LB, you totally worked at my firm, didn't you?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:41 PM
Data point: every person I know who gets out of private practice suddenly seems a lot happier. Probably just coincidence.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:49 PM
Could easily be -- I'm on my third firm by now. I started at a giant firm founded by the editor of Paris Review's uncle, moved on to a teeny little litigation boutique, and ended up back at another behemoth.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:49 PM
34: Mmmhmm. I just need to figure out who else wants a general commercial litigator other than law firms.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:51 PM
Fourth or fifth, depending how you count. Big firm (by local standards), another big firm, small firm in another city, back here to small firm of my own, then merged back into where I started. Slowly getting the idea that maybe it's what I'm doing, not where I'm doing it. My wife went to work for the feds last year, and while she still works almost as hard (she's like that), getting rid of the timesheets and related fun made a major difference in her state of mind.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:54 PM
large corporations want their own general corporate litigators to oversee the general corporate litigators at the large behemoth firms they hire to handle various corporate litigations.
But it involves more overseeing than litigation from what I can tell.
If the uncle of the Paris Review's founder was on the franternal side, and is still a name partner, I know what firm you're talking about, but it isn't mine.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:56 PM
DaveL, do the Feds need general commercial litigators?
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:56 PM
Once I get my finances in strong enough shape to handle the pay cut, I do have my eye on the NYC Corporation Counsel's office. I've heard good things about working there.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:58 PM
I just need to figure out who else wants a general commercial litigator other than law firms.
Insurance companies, especially if you're the kind of person who finds coverage issues interesting. Government, if you can live with what they pay. The feds aren't bad by most standards, but nowhere close to big-firm private practice. Maybe some in-house counsel positions, depending on industry.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 1:58 PM
A new file, and a new file, and a new file,
Creeps in this database from day to day,
If I knew more legal jargon I'd finish this. When I worked at a litigation support company I actually put something like this -- making use of various internal protocol terms, ending with "simplifying nothing" -- up on the dry-erase board near the cubicles. I don't think the management ever noticed it.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 2:00 PM
39: yes. That's more or less what my wife was doing. You can search all (I think) of the federal jobs for which the general public can apply at usajobs.opm.gov.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 2:02 PM
I know someone who did corporate law (mostly Ks for VC-backed companies) at medium-big Boston firm. She has since gone in-house for a subsidiary of a mutual fund company. She's doing compliance work. I don't think that she loves it, but it's not the hell that ML was, and I don't think she has time-sheets.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 2:02 PM
If the uncle of the Paris Review's founder was on the franternal side, and is still a name partner
Well, he's dead quite a while, but he's the second name in the firm's name. And corporations do want a certain number of commercial litigators, but not anything like as many as they want transactional lawyers.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 2:02 PM
I think government is the long term plan, but I need to get my finances in better shape -- college savings, paying off debt -- before I can handle the pay cut. Until then, I'll just whine all day.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 2:04 PM
Once I get my finances in strong enough shape
Initially I read "finances" as "fiancés" and it took me a minute to figure out what was going on.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 2:06 PM
The lot of them are doing wind sprints as we speak. Once they're all in tip top shape, I retire and live in luxury.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 2:11 PM
40: See, that's why firms in a lot of places are smarter than they are here. Around here, the economy was fairly slow through most of the 90s, and even as it's picked up, associate compensation has stayed relatively low. As a result, people in the 4-7 year range who are profitable for the firms still have outside options that pay somewhere in the same range as the private practice jobs. If they stick around and make partner, it starts going up pretty fast. It seems to me that they'd be better off paying mid-level to senior associates enough to have some golden handcuffs effect, then slow down the growth rate for the junior partners. Doesn't matter a lot to me personally--coming back from outside, I'm on a separate track--but I can't understand why money doesn't come to mind as a possible solution to associate attrition.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 2:15 PM
"...I started at a giant firm founded by the editor of Paris Review's uncle...."
Philip Gourevitch or George Plimpton?
"...Paris Review's founder"
There were three, actually; besides Plimpton were also Peter Matthiessen and HL Humes; 1953.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 4:48 PM
Now if we just had a searchable database of the litigation department of the firm in question for the last few years, we could out LB. But that wouldn't be nice.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 4:59 PM
Sorry, thought better of that one, but not quite in time. LB, feel free to delete if you're so inclined.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 5:01 PM
LB can rest assured that I've long forgotten her real name, though it's always remotely possible my wack memory might someday reguritate it again.
I could point out an entirely obvious (different) way to derive it again, but I won't.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 5:46 PM
Right, okay, I reminded myself what it was; that's how long it took to check.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 5:50 PM
Plimpton.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 5:51 PM
Um, you can delete all those comments, if that's over the line.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 5:52 PM
Does the link in 25 piss off anyone else?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 6:00 PM
I guess not. Fair enough.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 7:02 PM
What about it pisses you off, teofilo?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 7:18 PM
Several things, but the main one is that I'm highly skeptical that any of the Navajo "names" would actually be used in any kind of Navajo context -- they're mostly just words, and many of them are kinship terms with the first person singular possessive prefix (shi- ; look how many of these are on the list). I strongly doubt anyone is named "My Sister"; it's more like whoever compiled the list just looked through a Navajo word list or something.
And that leads to a bigger problem, which is that I don't actually know what a list of Navajo names would look like because I've never known the Navajo names of any of the (many) Navajos I've known in my life -- they're generally for ritual purposes only, and not used in daily life. I doubt whoever compiled that list would know better, especially given the improbability of many of the names (see previous paragraph).
I could go on, but those are the main points.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 7:34 PM
I'm not sure why that pisses you off.
Yes, there's often a distinction between call names and registered names (as the AKC would say). In this country there were names like Slim, Lefty, Dusty, Tex. I know a guy whose name is Tiny (he's about 6'6" and mebbe 300 lbs, and that's what he is called, by himself and others). I lived with a guy whose papers said he was Wizzer of Yardcastle, but my father called him George. My brother and I sometimes referred to him as our little black brother. He was a standard poodle, but counted as a family member.
There are US people's registered names such as Charity, Chastity, Rose, June, and Amber, all of which have common meanings.
My own first name, according to my brother, translates as "strange kid nobody wants but the police brought him one day and asked us to watch him so we let him stay here." Of course, his informal name, both as a term of address and for references, was My Idiot Brother.
There's probably someone on the Fort Defiance plateau right now thinking "LizardBreath is a pretty weird name. I wonder what that'd translate to in Navajo."
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 8:59 PM
It pisses me off because these aren't Navajo names, which is what they're being advertised as; that is, I am assuming this list was posted for the benefit of people who want a Native American name for their little white baby (for whatever reason), and I think they're being misled. I have no problem with a parent using one of these names -- many are quite mellifluous, and unusual, and other advantageous qualities in names -- but they should realize that they aren't the kinds of names actual Navajos have but rather words from the Navajo language that sound nice to English-speaking people. There are also issues of appropriation of cultural property that I see no need to go into further.
And LizardBreath in Navajo is na'asho'ii bighih.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 10:45 PM
Thank you, that's clearer. I guess when I saw the phrase "Navajo name meaning ..." I was thinking of Navajo as a language. In the same way I'd read "Slim: English; meaning thin or plump person" without actually expecting an Englishman to name his son Slim.
But I can see how it is misleading. I simply thought it was superficial and unreliable, and I've certainly never run into Navajos with names like those. Which I suppose should piss me off, too. I saw Alameda on the list, and I always thought that was a Spanish word.
A look at the list of members of the Navajo Council shows the following names: Evelyn , Larry , Eddie , George, Pete, Andy, Lorenzo, Harriett, Lorenzo, Kee, Leo, Mel, Omer, Sampson, Willie, Nelson, Richard, Alice, Katherine ... and so on. I assume they're all Navajo, to be on the Council.
So I agree, the list displays a sort of arrogant ignorance which is deplorable. The list is at http://www.navajonationcouncil.org/delegates.htm
All of which shows that you're a far better linguist and know more about Navajo than I, but we knew that.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 11:44 PM
That's the link to the Navajo Council. I didn't make it clear.
I guess I also didn't really think anyone was going to actually pick a name from that list and inflict it on a child. Or that anyone posted the list for that purpose. I suppose that's my own naivete. Their list of unusual names is also seriously weird.
I don't know what to think about cultural appropriation, but I'm glad I don't have to try to remember how to spell LizardBreath in Navajo. Being incompetent in one language is enough for me.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 02- 2-06 11:49 PM
Relational is one possibility, although where I come from, flat text files are searchable.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 02- 3-06 12:54 PM