Revolutionary Baby Names in Russia

[spanishspy]

Very interesting insight into how totalitarianism in Russia established itself even in the naming of babies.

[stevep]

Oct 4, 2018 20:55:48 GMT spanishspy said:

Very interesting insight into how totalitarianism in Russia established itself even in the naming of babies.

  It seems to happen at times.  I remember reading about some of the highly religious names during the civil war and commonwealth in Britain.

  It would be dangerous I fear for anyone named something like Lentrosh or Lentrozin given that includes a reference to Trotsky after he's forced into exile and Stalin's rise to power.

[spanishspy]

Oct 5, 2018 10:14:51 GMT stevep said:

Oct 4, 2018 20:55:48 GMT spanishspy said:

Very interesting insight into how totalitarianism in Russia established itself even in the naming of babies.

  It seems to happen at times.  I remember reading about some of the highly religious names during the civil war and commonwealth in Britain.

  It would be dangerous I fear for anyone named something like Lentrosh or Lentrozin given that includes a reference to Trotsky after he's forced into exile and Stalin's rise to power.

You're right - Some of these names referenced people who were later unpersoned. 

And I get the comparison to Civil War-era Britain - although my first thought as a parallel was Puritan-era Massachusetts (being an American and all - but I would imagine they came from the same font).

[Zyobot]

I've found similar findings in my research of authoritarian regimes. In its page on Fascist Italy, TV Tropes (which may/may not be reliable, but I sadly couldn't find an official report, story or study) mentioned that they policed the Italian language, too: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/FascistItaly

The Italian pronoun for you went from "lei" to "voi" because the latter was too "foreign-sounding", words of foreign origin were censored and replaced with completely new ones that incited laughter when people talked, speaking dialects or minority languages was forbidden, etcetera. That's how far the by-our-standards ridiculous language policing went in '40s Italy.

It honestly got me thinking that had the Anglosphere gone totalitarian at some point, the English language would potentially end up much less vocabulary-rich and hybridized than it is IOTL. The same logic might apply to other countries and their spoken tongues as well.

[spanishspy]

Oct 6, 2018 1:34:48 GMT Zyobot said:

I've found similar findings in my research of authoritarian regimes. In its page on Fascist Italy, TV Tropes (which may/may not be reliable, but I sadly couldn't find an official report, story or study) mentioned that they policed the Italian language, too: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/FascistItaly

The Italian pronoun for you went from "lei" to "voi" because the latter was too "foreign-sounding", words of foreign origin were censored and replaced with completely new ones that incited laughter when people talked, speaking dialects or minority languages was forbidden, etcetera. That's how far the by-our-standards ridiculous language policing went in '40s Italy.

It honestly got me thinking that had the Anglosphere gone totalitarian at some point, the English language would potentially end up much less vocabulary-rich and hybridized than it is IOTL. The same logic might apply to other countries and their spoken tongues as well.

During Revolutionary-era France, the government tried to ban the word 'vous' and insisting that only 'tu' should be used between people as a sign of equality. I can agree that a totalitarian Anglophone country's English would be more purely 'Germanic' with an attempt to perhaps even delatinize it.

[Zyobot]

Oct 6, 2018 2:19:05 GMT spanishspy said:

Oct 6, 2018 1:34:48 GMT Zyobot said:

I've found similar findings in my research of authoritarian regimes. In its page on Fascist Italy, TV Tropes (which may/may not be reliable, but I sadly couldn't find an official report, story or study) mentioned that they policed the Italian language, too: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/FascistItaly

The Italian pronoun for you went from "lei" to "voi" because the latter was too "foreign-sounding", words of foreign origin were censored and replaced with completely new ones that incited laughter when people talked, speaking dialects or minority languages was forbidden, etcetera. That's how far the by-our-standards ridiculous language policing went in '40s Italy.

It honestly got me thinking that had the Anglosphere gone totalitarian at some point, the English language would potentially end up much less vocabulary-rich and hybridized than it is IOTL. The same logic might apply to other countries and their spoken tongues as well.

During Revolutionary-era France, the government tried to ban the word 'vous' and insisting that only 'tu' should be used between people as a sign of equality. I can agree that a totalitarian Anglophone country's English would be more purely 'Germanic' with an attempt to perhaps even delatinize it.

Hmm. That makes me wonder how Russian, Chinese and/or other languages spoken in once-controlling countries would've turned out had they been freer and more able to develop without government intervention. Probably not unrecognizable, but I feel that there would've been at least a smattering of additional vocabulary and linguistic change.

[spanishspy]

Oct 6, 2018 2:42:39 GMT Zyobot said:

Oct 6, 2018 2:19:05 GMT spanishspy said:

During Revolutionary-era France, the government tried to ban the word 'vous' and insisting that only 'tu' should be used between people as a sign of equality. I can agree that a totalitarian Anglophone country's English would be more purely 'Germanic' with an attempt to perhaps even delatinize it.

Hmm. That makes me wonder how Russian, Chinese and/or other languages spoken in once-controlling countries would've turned out had they been freer and more able to develop without government intervention. Probably not unrecognizable, but I feel that there would've been at least a smattering of additional vocabulary and linguistic change.

More loanwords, definitely, and more neologisms. 

On the opposite note seeing how these languages could get more controlling is also interesting. It was mentioned in a fan expansion of 1984 on AH.com that that particular poster's form of Newspeak for Chinese had characters whose meanings constantly changed..