You are sailorman and I claim one Bitcoin.
A bheil seòrsa sam bith eile ann?
Even I, a signed up member of the God Squad, acknowledge that in some contexts CE is more appropriate than AD. AD stands for Anno Domini, that is, Year of the Lord. In a multicultural environment, that is clearly making too many assumptions and could be interpreted differently by Christians, Buddhists and perhaps Muslims. CE (Christian Era) is both explicit and refers to a historically important development. Whether you believe or not, the rise of the Christian faith probably changed history to a greater extent than almost anything else you can imagine.
I still find myself referring to people’s first name as their Christian name. I find ‘given name’ such a repulsive phrase that I refuse to use it.
Technically, a Christian name is one bestowed at Baptism. So it is actually incorrect to use the term for a person who has not been baptized (probably a majority of children these days). In many cultures, especially in Africa, the baptismal name may well be bestowed in adulthood and is a sign of the person's religion. I don't have a problem with "given name"; it is a concise and widely understood term that distinguishes it from other names such as patronymic, surname, matronymic and others I have no doubt not heard of!
I think the definition is deliberately vague! However, its numbering starts from a date meaningful only in the Christian religion (and yes, I know they got it wrong; Herod the Great, who figures largely in the Christmas narrative was dead well before 1AD!). So, to me "Common Era" smacks of over-egging the pudding;. Whatever your religion, you can't argue that (barring the errors of calculation mentioned above) the start date of the modern calendar marks the conventional start of the Christian religion, which had a major effect on the history of the world (we wouldn't be using it as a basis for a calendar otherwise!). If we were to try for a really secular calendar, we'd have to date it from some unambiguous date determined by a natural event that is widely recorded in the annals of various civilizations. Such events are few and far between - the supernova that resulted in the Crab Nebula might work, or another such supernova - but even such striking celestial events as these tend not to be recorded universally if they happen to have occurred during times of stress in one civilization or another.
But most of us don't worry about that as long as our GPS carries on working!
I should have clarified that my knowledge is based on Hong Kong customs, where the effects of the Cultural Revolution didn't happen, and where traditional Chinese is still the norm. I was ignoring the custom of taking a "Western" name; the practice has varied over the years. In my late wife's generation, it was usual for people to adopt a "Western" later in life, if the perceived need arose (my late wife didn't adopt such a name until her late teens when she came to the UK to do A-levels), but later generations (I think even my late wife's youngest sister, 12 years younger) tended to be given them at birth. This actually resulted in difficulties for us when the passport office objected to us using a name not attested by her birth certificate, but which was on various other official documents such as her driving license! They couldn't simply revert to the name on her birth certificate, as she had obviously been using her "Western" name for official purposes - even her NI number. This resulted in her having to make a sworn declaration of her full name, and us missing a holiday because we couldn't get her passport through in time.
All more or less true (and we aren't looking for accuracy, only conventionality). It's a bit like the temperature scales which have zero points set where some inventor thought would be useful. We can manage to convert from one to another so long as we know, unambiguously, which scale any given value is using. So naming is important but arbitrary...I think the definition is deliberately vague! However, its numbering starts from a date meaningful only in the Christian religion (and yes, I know they got it wrong; Herod the Great, who figures largely in the Christmas narrative was dead well before 1AD!). So, to me "Common Era" smacks of over-egging the pudding;. Whatever your religion, you can't argue that (barring the errors of calculation mentioned above) the start date of the modern calendar marks the conventional start of the Christian religion, which had a major effect on the history of the world (we wouldn't be using it as a basis for a calendar otherwise!). If we were to try for a really secular calendar, we'd have to date it from some unambiguous date determined by a natural event that is widely recorded in the annals of various civilizations. Such events are few and far between - the supernova that resulted in the Crab Nebula might work, or another such supernova - but even such striking celestial events as these tend not to be recorded universally if they happen to have occurred during times of stress in one civilization or another.
Of course, you can argue that the concept of simultaneity has little meaning in a relativistic universe
The real problems come when trying to set up dating for things like the Ancient Egyptians, where the correlation between their dating and other systems is based on very few points, and where regnal years (the usual method in Egypt) may overlap when an elderly ruler appointed his successor as Pharaoh while still retaining the title himself. It worked fine in relatively stable times, but in other times - such as dynastic change - it tended to fall over a lot! There are serious issues over the dating of the rules of people like Akhenaten, Smenkare and Tutankamun - there's even a possibility that Nefertiti rules alone for a while, but we don't know.
Now most of us have the "surname" of @gmail.com and just have to choose a "forename"...Re names and religion, in the former French colonies there was/is the custom to give a newborn the name of the birth day's Saint: Patrice, Joseph, etc. as they read on the calendar.
It was/is not unusual to find people named "Fetnat": they were born on July 14th which is... Fête Nationale, usually shortened Fête Nat. on small calendars.
Disco Volante shirley?I'm surprised to learn from Martin_J that the Italian for UFO is 'Oggetto Volante Non Identificato'. I would have thought it would be something like 'Oh guarda, dev'essere che Leonardo ha ricominciato a fare i suoi trucchi'.
I also wonder what Anglo-Saxons would have called UFOs.
True, but some of us pay a nominal amount to have our own Internet Surname!Now most of us have the "surname" of @gmail.com and just have to choose a "forename"...
I do that too. Which means that I can invent an open-ended list of new forenames. Despite the fact that many agencies seem to assume that each of us have just one identifying email address...
