Random thought: Kris and variants

[pne]

I think that the spellings "Kristina" / "Kristopher" / "Kris" with initial K- look ugly. As in, icky icky "who would want to call their child that, that's just Wrong" ugly.

Oddly enough, perhaps, I'm fine with "Kristen", "Kristin", and "Kirsten" (and "Kerstin", which I haven't seen on a native English speaker)—possibly because I haven't seen those names spelled with Chr-.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Well, thanks a lot for your 2 cents, but I quite like my name. I'm very glad that my parents chose to christen me Kristina using the Scandinavian spelling, as all through my school life there were loads of Christinas, Christine and Christianes about, and I was not in so much danger of being confused.

However, I do think it is rather derogatory of you to call it "ugly" and "wrong". A person's name, like skin colour or sex, is something that they did not choose.

Anyhow, as for the Scandinavian way of spelling the names: It's a system of spelling that chose an unambiguous letter-to-sound-relationship, and that is, to my mind, not such a bad idea. The "Ch"-spelling, for all that I know, originated in the transliteration of Greek and would originally signify the /x/ sound at the end of German "bach", which is not what my name begins with.

But still, thanks for sharing.

[pne.livejournal.com]

A person's name, like skin colour or sex, is something that they did not choose.

Though unlike those, it's something their parents chose, so there was a choice involved. If a child is called Stupidmoron, then that's not an accident of genetics.

Anyhow, as for the Scandinavian way of spelling the names: It's a system of spelling that chose an unambiguous letter-to-sound-relationship, and that is, to my mind, not such a bad idea.

Fair enough. But English spelling is not completely unphonetic, either, and initial k- is typically used only before front vowels (i, e); before consonants and back vowels (a, o, u), I would expect c-. Having a k- there looks awkward to me. (I also think that "Krispy Kremes" looks really strange, for example.)

[pne.livejournal.com]

The "Ch"-spelling, for all that I know, originated in the transliteration of Greek

*nods* That's what I've heard, too -- Romans borrowed Greek words with chi in them with a "ch" spelling.

and would originally signify the /x/ sound at the end of German "bach"

Depends on what time period you're talking about; as far as I know, chi in Attic Greek represented an aspirated /k/ sound (as "k" at the beginning of English words such as "key", where the "k" is accompanied by a puff of air), which justifies the spelling of "ch" in Latin, since "c" is /k/ and "h" is /h/. (Similarly for the spellings "ph", which was aspirated "p" -- /p_h/ -- as in English "puff" in Ancient Greek, and didn't change to /f/ until later, or "th", which was aspirated /t_h/ originally and later /T/, i.e. the sound th- in English "thick".)