If you look carefully, you will see that the B in Brian in the subject is actually the Greek ß and the O in O’Neill is actually the an Ö with an umlaut (or diaeresis if you prefer).
Two questions here:
(1) Could I legally change my name to this adaptation if I wished as a separate version of the original?
(2) How would it technically be pronounced? I realize I could pronounce it any way I wished, but what would the literal translation of this sound like?
Yer pal,
Satan
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Hmmm…I assumed that first letter was the German “ss”
So,
You’re name would be pronounced “SREYE-en” “EU NEEL”
The “eu” is pretty much the sound you make with the “u” in “fur”
If you interpret the first symbol as the Greek beta, I assume then it would be “BREYE-en EU NEEL”
As for your first question, I really can’t say for sure. I don’t see why not. If it were the German interpretation, you could also spell it: “Ssrian Oe’Neill” as the Germans have ways of adapting spelling to “normal” typewriters.
Um, the would not be the Greek B as in Beta since its identical to the B we typically see. You however used a german ß, called the essette (sp?) and it is typically replased with a “ss” in common typing. It is pronounced the same. Now, you could change your name, and call yourself Brian…but you’d look like a dipßhit.
Prince changed his name, but I’m not sure how that worked out legally, or if it was 100% PR. Knowing that guy, he seems like the type to go all the way, so maybe you can indeed.
I learned ß as being called the es-set, and as being a solely lower-case letter. If capitalized, it’d be spelled SS. SSo, it was borrowed from the Greek who did use it as the lower-case form of beta, pronounced as a ‘b’ sound. BTW, the umalaut is what the Germans call it. It’s called a diaresis if applied to languages that don’t use it to make a vowel longer (‘oh’ to ‘ooh’ [think ‘ooh, aah’]).
As other posters have pointed out, your first character was actually a german double-s.
O umlaut, in german, is pretty much pronounced as the “e” in the english word “her.”
In german, be aware that any word with an umlaut can also be written by putting an e after the letter with the umlaut, and removing the umlaut.
e.g.
Köln = Koeln
Zürich = Zuerich
etc…
As another practical matter, when it comes to typewriters or other media without accents, most people will simply omit the accent over the letter. For that reason, many computer programs that search for and/or sort text are written to treat all accented versions of a letter as being identical to the letter, e.g.
à = á = â = ä = å = a
So in the real world, even if you decide you want to write your name with accented letters, most americans will ignore the accents and write it down without an accent.
eh… umlauts don’t make vowels longer. umlaut literally means “change in sound” and comes from “um” (about) + “laut” (sound.) Here are the effects on various vowels:
“a” becomes sort of like an “a” in apple (for lack of better reference) or, if long, like the “ay” sound without
that “y” at the tail end.
“o” becomes “e” in “her” as previously stated.
“u” becomes … oh boy … say “oo” while making lips
to say “ee.” should sound like Dexter from Dexter’s lab
saying “DO,” as in “dee-dee, what are you DOing?”
And, to add to Derleth, an example of a diaresis is when the New Yorker puts those damned things over the second
“o” in cooperation, so we don’t accidentally say “COOP eration” It’s used in English to mark vowels that are to be pronounced separately, and not as a unit with a preceding vowel.
I’ve got a funny problem with my system that intermittently changes certain fields to Greek. I refreshed the Forum List 6 times to try to get rid of the funny characters before reading this.
Just for that little trick, the price of my soul just went up.
Okay, brief hijack to give the history of the symbol ß as used in German.
It’s called the ‘ess-tset’, and did not originally derive from Greek lowercase beta, even if written that way today. Ess and tset are the names of the letters ‘s’ and ‘z’ in German ( pretty similar to English, especially if you say ‘zed’ for z). When the letters are written right next to each other in Fraktur, it looks very much like this symbol.
I realize that last statement probably causes some to question, “What the heck is Fraktur? Am I supposed to know that?” You’ve probably all seen Fraktur – it’s the style of writing that looks gothic and medieval, and was in fact the method of printed/typeset German up until the early half of this century or so. In Fraktur, the letter ‘s’ is written similar to f without a full crossbar, and z is most similar to the cursive lowercase z in English. Write them next to each other and you have a long line with a hook at the top and two B-like bulges on the right. Hence, ‘ess-tset’. I think it became ß when the roman typeface was used more and more instead of Fraktur.
This doesn’t mean it ought to be pronounced “sz”; it’s still pronounced ‘ss’. ß never appears at the start of a word, not only because starting a word with ss ssounds ssilly, but because the s was only written like f when it was in the middle of a word (like ‘Congrefs’ in the U.S. Constitution).
Had enough? There’s more. It used to be that one could always write ‘ss’ instead of ‘ß’ in most words; however, a couple of years ago, Germany decided to establish hard and fast rules for spelling to eliminate all irregularities. I don’t know a whole lot about it, or how well it’s going, but it did seem a bit silly to try to force everyone to learn a set of rules rather than all the irregularities handed down from the past. What that means is, there’s specifications about when to use ss and when to use ß, although it’s probably still okay to write ss in almost every case. That doesn’t work perfectly, though, since there’s words like “Masse” meaning mass of stuff or mixture and “Maße” meaning the plural of “Maß”, “measures”. (Maß is also the way to order a liter of beer in Bavaria, but doesn’t change when plural).
panama jack
Wer keine andere Sprache kennt, kennt sein eigne nicht. - Goethe
The preceding post has absolutely no bearing on your life. We apologize for the waste of your time.
So how do you write ß when you’re writing all in capitals? Let’s say I wanted to use the word Eßzimmer as a column heading, where the other column headings are all in capitals. Would I write ESSZIMMER or EßZIMMER. In Icelandic, the letter ð never occurs at the start of a word, but when all the letters are capitalized, it’s Ð (rarely seen otherwise). Is there a special symbol for the capital of ß?
Okay, brief hijack to give the history of the symbol ß as used in German.
ß never appears at the start of a word, not only because starting a word with ss ssounds ssilly, but because the s was only written like f when it was in the middle of a word (like ‘Congrefs’ in the U.S. Constitution).
I learned, way back in high school German, that the ß only appears at end of a word, and that “ss” is used at all other times. But, hey, go for it!
Omni said: Prince changed his name, but I’m not sure how that worked out legally, or if it was 100% PR. Knowing that guy, he seems like the type to go all the way, so maybe you can indeed.
I doubt that Prince could legally change his name to a symbol. After all you can’t name a child “5.” It is perfectly acceptable to name him “FIVE” however. If you spelled they symbol out you could get away with it though. As for non legal you can pretty much use whatever you can get away with. Even an “X” is acceptable if everyone agrees to it.
Not quite. Try the ß in “bißchen” or “straße” – and i’m sure there’s plenty more –
although I’m not sure you can always substitute “ss” with
“ß” as I’ve never seen “wasser” written as “waßer.”
but you can always substitute “ß” with “ss.”
