Ah, that’s a good explanation. Especially now that Putin (who would love us to start putting the “the” back in there) is making his “Russia is too a superpower” noises.
Also applies to the top selling US band, ‘Eagles’
MiM
Also, “Eurythmics”.
Your legal signature is your legal signature, however you write it, “S” or no “S”. Most people have an illegible signature, but it is still their legal signature.
Aw, let’s leave the band name, “the-or-no-the” arguments to the merry get-a-lifers at the Steve Hoffman forum, shall we?
It’s not Butthead. It’s Butt-Head. Important.
Two restaurant chains that should by all logic have apostrophes in their names but don’t:
Tim Hortons (Canadian donut hole)
Popeyes (chicken shack)
Speaking of businesses that sound like they should have apostrophes but don’t, a few days ago in another thread I referred to a regional chain of discount stores in the Southeast as “Rose’s”. They’re actually called “Roses”. I regret the error.
Ronly Bonly Jones.
A story told to me by my Dad, who claimed that a friend of a friend knew him. Certified urban legend, unless the guy had an amazing number of Army buddy friends who each had lots of friends to tell the tale to. But the story goes that a guy joins the Army with the name given to him by his parents, R B Jones, wherein the initials don’t stand for anything. Initial Army paperwork puts him down as R [only] B [only] Jones, with predictable results.
Hmm. I lived in Moscow in 1977, and I don’t recall Russian having any definite articles. I also remember the SSR, as it was then, being referred to as “Ukraina,” which I believe is exactly what Ukrainians call their country.
When I got my driver’s license (2 renewals ago) that was my first “secure ID,” (in Indiana, it has a red star on it), I was told that it must have my full name on it, first and middle. Before that, I never used my middle name on my driver’s license.
That must be a state-by-state thing - I last renewed in 2019 (pre-COVID) and it’s an enhanced license* . I must have upgraded to the enhanced in 2011 which would have been the last renewal prior to 2019 - but DMV didn’t add my full middle name to the license.
* which allows me to return to the US by land or sea from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean
If I may be allowed to expand this discussion (and I may; I started it) to pronunciation as well as spelling/ capitalization/ punctuation - “Carnegie” (as in Carnegie Hall in New York, named after robber baron philanthropist Andrerw Carnegie) is pronounced car-NEG-ie, rhymes with Peggy, not CAR-negie which is the common way people say it.
This is probably why the Andrew Carnegie Foundation lately donated a lot of money to NPR, just so they can get frequent on-air acknowledgements of "This program was made possible by a grant from the Andrew Car-NEG-ie Foundation (and Viewers like You, yuk yuk), and perhaps get people to say it right, though why they care I wouldn’t hazard a guess.
Some of us learned that from Allan Sherman:
H-O-ROW-ITZ spells Horowitz
Yesterday I took my girlfriend Peggy
To watch him play a concert at Carnegie
Except I assumed that was Allan doing it wrong as a joke.
The magician Teller had his name legally changed to just one word. (His birthname was Raymond Joseph Teller.) He supposedly had difficulty getting a driver’s license issued with just a single word name but eventually managed it.
McCalls used to have an apostrophe, but dropped it. Probably a lot of corporations have done the same
What do you mean, “would be”? That’s how it’s pronounced.
Never understood why Brian Griffin had a problem with it.
They basically are using “First Name” to stand for “personal given name(s)” and “Last Name” to stand for “Legal Surname”, which in the standard US Anglo practice is placed as the very last word in the string of names.
Seems to be for some purposes. Post 9/11 the passport regs were changed so that on first issue the name on the passport has to match that on the birth certificate. In other contexts however it becomes a matter of “the name in this form must match the name on whatever you give us for proof of identity”
Going back to the older comment: My 1990s US Passport, issued stateside, had as “First Name” my two personal given names and as “Last Name” my paternal surname, in the style of culturally Anglo American usage.
Upon loss of that document, I had to get it reissued in the 00’s in Puerto Rico, using my PR Birth Certificate, and at that point it was NOT a choice to enter the single surname but had to be issued with the dual surname that is our legal and cultural standard (and where the primary surname is not the last word)
At some point after 1987ish, as around that time at my then-employment he had to show me his ID with the original name.
They must have changed it again - my birth certificate has my full middle name and my passport only has my middle initial ( although it is in the field for “Given Names”) although my first passport was issued in 2016. The passport does match my driver’s license.