Timeline for What is the term for someone who has a last name that can also be a first name?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
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| Oct 2, 2012 at 23:12 | comment | added | Pitarou | @Dmitri I take your point. And the questioner's example (Brian Stella) falls in the category of last names that commonly function as first names. | |
| Oct 2, 2012 at 18:07 | comment | added | Dmitri | @Pitarou : My general rule on language, the smaller the word, the more shades of meaning it can have. The word "can" is an excellent case in point: I had no trouble understanding that in this question "can also be a first name," doesn't mean "function as" but rather "is commonly accepted as." In fact, this usage is so common, that I fear that both your answer and your impassioned defense are beginning to have a whiff of pedantry about them. | |
| Oct 2, 2012 at 7:51 | comment | added | Pitarou | @Dmitri If the questioner had asked: What is the term for someone whose last name is also a common first name? then you would have a valid point. But the question was: What is the term for someone who has a last name that can also be a first name? Do you see the difference? | |
| Oct 1, 2012 at 20:44 | comment | added | Dmitri | But that's just wrong. Surely it is fairly apparent that a "Lucas Allen" or a "Henry William" is a different sort of name than "Winthorp Honeybucket," or even "Washington Irving." | |
| Jun 13, 2012 at 3:57 | comment | added | Mitch | @Christi: a perfectly good answer is to state that the question does not have an answer. | |
| Jun 12, 2012 at 23:30 | comment | added | Pitarou | Thanks for the comments. I've edited the answer to make it answer the question more directly. | |
| Jun 12, 2012 at 23:28 | history | edited | Pitarou | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Tried to make my answer more directly address the question.
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| Jun 12, 2012 at 20:20 | comment | added | J.R. | It may not be a direct answer, but it does address the scope of the question. (Perhaps this would have made a better comment than an answer, but I don't think it needs to be deleted.) | |
| Jun 12, 2012 at 12:00 | comment | added | Christi | Not an answer to the question, hence the downvote. Would suggest deleting this. | |
| Jun 12, 2012 at 8:50 | comment | added | J.R. | That's a good point. Moreover, that practice is not exactly rare, especially with middle names (at least in the U.S., it's not unheard of to use the mother's maiden name as the child's middle name). But I assumed the O.P. was referring to common names. Perhaps a more interesting phenomenon is when the last name is a common first name, and the first name is a common last name: e.g., Thomas Scott (or Scott Thomas). | |
| Jun 12, 2012 at 2:16 | history | answered | Pitarou | CC BY-SA 3.0 |