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One of the foremost teachings of journalism school is
You can say almost anything about people, just as long
as you spell their names right.
That is no simple matter, even for people with intact
psyches who missed journalism school. For more than a
decade, my name has appeared in large type on these pages,
and yet I still receive mail addressed to Quinlan,
Quillan,
Quindland
and other bizarre
variations.
I toy with the notion of resurrecting a method I used
once in college, where a teacher daily addressed me as
Quinella
during roll call, even though I corrected
him for the first two or three days.
One morning he called on me. I sat mute. He persisted.
Finally I responded that I didn't know of anyone named
Quinella
in this class, and would he please quit
bothering me, as my name was Quillen.
But this isn't college, so I dutifully try to respond to correspondence, no matter how much my name is mangled.
A further complication is that newspaper copy moves through computers these days, rather than on paper.
On paper, you could scribble CQ
after a peculiar
spelling (CQ, like -30-
for the end of a story, is
one of those arcane incantations once required for
admission to the Media Elite), and the typesetters and copy
editors would make sure the spelling was preserved.
But with text on computer screens, well, where do you
scribble? When I edited the local daily, we installed an
electronic front end
(another Media Elite term) in
1981.
Shortly thereafter, a young man died whose first name
was Rohn.
The reporter who wrote the obituary was
out when I edited it, so I couldn't ask her, and naturally
I thought the name was supposed to be John
and thus
adjusted the text.
It was so printed, and the family was rightfully upset, as was the reporter.
And every day I had to remember whether a certain
person's name was Karen,
Caren,
Caryn,
Karin,
Charan,
etc., and somehow get it into
print properly.
Throw in the spell-checkers on computers, which will automatically adjust variant spellings unless you're quite careful, and I'm beginning to think America should emulate Iceland, and establish a standard registry of names and their spelling.
If I were in charge of that registry, I'd make these rules:
1) Everyone must have at least a first and last name.
Names like Cher,
the Donald,
Roseanne,
Geraldo
and Madonna
are egotistical
affectations, a way to say I am so famous that other
people with my first name don't matter.
2) No first name can be a mere initial. Recall former
Crested Butte mayor W. Mitchell
? More affectation, I
say. J. Danforth Quayle
and R. Emmett Tyrell,
Jr.
are pretentious. Outlaw this; they'd manage as
Jim Quayle
and Bob Tyrell.
3) Both names must be capitalized. Every so often I run
across something written by a bell hooks.
I have no
idea what bell hooks has against the conventions of
orthography, but it sure looks like a way to call attention
to bell hooks instead of whatever bell hooks has to
say.
4) Standardize the spelling of given names. Do we really need Susie, Suzie, Suzy, Suzi, Susi and Siouxzee? Tom, Thom, Tomm and Ptom? Wouldn't we be a more productive society if editors didn't have to spend hours checking and confirming these spellings?
5) Names must use alphabetic characters. The main offender here is the raging ego of a one-name musician, who then changed his name to a custom symbol.
Thus, when it becomes necessary to mention him, and that
symbol isn't available, he is the artist formerly known
as Prince.
That's a mouthful. Even worse, it's contagious. On the
news yesterday was an account of disturbances in the
Republic of Congo, which is not the nation formerly known
as Zaire.
And, I must confess, this process can be fun. The
seat of the county formerly known as Carbonate
sounds
classier than mere Leadville,
and the river
formerly known as the Napestle
is certainly an
improvement on Arkansas.
Note the prestige of
hosting the group formerly called the G-7 gathering in
the structure formerly open to the public as a library in
the city formerly known as Auraria.
Alas, we've even caught this affliction here. Last fall
we acquired a cat, named Princess Joan
by its former
owner. I said I'd lose some guy status if I had to stand on
the porch calling Here, Princess Joan,
and suggested
a descriptive name, like Nuisance,
Pest,
or
Annoyance.
Martha didn't like those, for some reason, and gave the
feline a new name: the cat formerly known as
Princess.
Since cats pay absolutely no attention to
what you say, it works just fine.
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