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

[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.)