
Why we don't use Galileo's last name (2009) - never-the-bride
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/08/why-we-don-t-use-galileo-s-last-name.html
======
dredmorbius
Naming is an interesting thing. I'm wrestling with it from another contex
presently.

I'm reminded of the lines from Homer. in which the hero (himself given at
least two names within the text, including one in its title) unambiguously
(and rather rashly as it happens) identifies himself to Polyphemus:

    
    
        Cyclops, if any man of mortal birth
        Note thine unseemly blindness and inquire
        The occasion, tell him that Laertes' son,
        Ulysses, the destroyer of walled towns,
        Whose home is Ithaca, put out thine eye.
    

Ancestry, name, deeds, place.

~~~
ddlatham
And I'm reminded of a time in college when my roommate, who majored in
classics, came home from class today and told me that they discussed a theory
that the Iliad and Odyssey, were not actually written by Homer, but rather by
a different place poet who happened to have the same name.

"So they were actually written by Homer then?"

I thought it hilarious, because the only identity of Homer I knew was the guy
who wrote those works, so what difference di see it make? Identifiers can get
into very sticky business sometimes.

~~~
fouc
I heard there was a similar confusion with Jesus Christ, basically another
prophet of the same name around the same time. One got killed on the cross but
the other one lived, leading to the 'came back from death' rebirth story.

~~~
gregw2
So the apostles who lived with him for several years were also just
"confused"?

~~~
photojosh
Well, there is the story about how he appeared and talked to some of them
during the course of a lengthy walk and they didn't recognise him until dinner
time... ;)

------
DoreenMichele
I worked in insurance for over five years. One of the more common reasons we
had to send out HIPAA notification letters was due to relatives in the same
city with similar or identical names getting claims processed under the wrong
policy. These were very often two male relatives -- father and son, twin
brothers, cousins. They sometimes even lived on the same street.

There's also this story about two women with the same name and birth date who
kept getting mixed up by the government of the city they lived in and finally
met to sort it out:

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/03/identity-
the...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/03/identity-theft-racial-
justice)

There are very real issues with not being able to reliably identify people in
a world where we so routinely interact with people who don't personally know
us. Thanks to my ex and I both having first-hand experience with family
members having similar names, we both agreed on making sure our children had
names that wouldn't cause that type of issue for them.

Yet I still have mixed feelings about our systems insisting on a particular
name format. If it were a foolproof system, identify theft would not be a
thing. Plus, it places a lot of weird, intrusive limitations on people who may
not in actual fact get called by the name they are required to give as their
"one true name."

Internet age version of this type issue:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20539187](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20539187)

See also the artist _Banksy_ for a similar issue in terms of an anonymous
person nonetheless having a consistent public identity and body of work.

~~~
klez
Here in Italy we are given a Codice Fiscale at birth, which is a string of 13
characters derived by 3 letters of the last name, 3 letters of the first name
(usually these 6 letters are all consonants, but there are exceptions for
names like Anna), 2 digits, a letter and two other digits representing the
birth day, one letter and the digits representing the birthplace an one last
letter which is a checksum.

These are state-issued so in case of people that share all those
characteristics there's a system in place which changes just one character and
gives a different result.

Every contract I signed and every interaction with the government required
this information, so the kind of mishaps you talk about are not that common
here (at least to my knowledge). Also, different from US social security
numbers, this is not used as the only credential for important services, so
keeping it secret is not needed (also, it can be manually derived in most
cases, indeed you know the needed data. The algorithm is public).

One other thing that avoids confusion is that father and son can't legally
have the same name.

EDIT: more info on the Italian Fiscal code
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fiscal_code_card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fiscal_code_card)

~~~
poizan42
Your are lucky. Here in Denmark we have the CPR-number (det Centrale Person
Register - the Central Person Register). Unfortunately this number is all to
often used as authentication so is supposed to be kept secret. This is of
course terribly broken and they get leaked all the time - also they are
stamped onto everybody's national health insurance card[0]...

[0]: It's the "999999-9996" on
[https://i.imgur.com/GscmMjX.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/GscmMjX.jpg)

~~~
CarlHoerberg
Where is the sole number used for authentication? We got the same number in
Sweden but the number is not secret, you need it combination with something
else like an ID, signature, digital signature etc.

------
nwatson
Aahhh, this is the Brazilian football/soccer player naming phenomenon [1] :
Zico, Ronaldinho, Sócrates, Pelé, Ronaldo, Edú, Falcão ...

( A Zico free kick in particular was such a joy to watch. )

[1] [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/06/how-brazilian-
so...](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/06/how-brazilian-soccer-
players-get-their-names.html)

~~~
gus_massa
Note that (if I counted correctly) 2 of them are the official first name, 2
are some variation of the first name and 3 are nicknames unrelated to the
first or family name.

------
walrus01
> A man named Ferrari might not be a blacksmith.

It was right in front of me and I feel dumb, having never considered it might
have the same latin root as the word ferrous.

[https://www.thoughtco.com/ferrari-last-name-meaning-and-
orig...](https://www.thoughtco.com/ferrari-last-name-meaning-and-
origin-1422504)

~~~
quickthrower2
I feel dumb too. Although on reading it my brain made the link with Farrier,
who specifically makes horse shoes.

------
gumby
From the article:

> Many nearby countries, like France and Germany, had systematized surnames
> generations earlier

Which isn't actually true: Prussia (and after German Unification, Germany)
instituted a wave of fixed family names in the 19th century. As the names were
recorded by officials, they often ended up being changed/assigned by same
officials (as also happened at Ellis Island in the USA). In the Prussian case
you can see it directly in the case of names assigned to jewish families,
which often played to stereotypes (Goldschmidt "goldsmith") or mocked the
recipient (Fischbaum "fish tree").

Turkey performed this process after the revolution in the 1920s; I read that
Atatürk chose his as "Father/Sire/Source of the Turks"

The field of naming is called Onomastics.

~~~
batuhanicoz
> I read that Atatürk chose his as "Father/Sire/Source of the Turks"

IIRC, the Parliament (Grand National Assembly of Turkey) gave Atatürk his
"surname".

It might give more context to add his definition of "Turk" is similar to
"American". Basically, it's about how you feel; if you feel like you're
Turkish, you're Turkish. It's not tied to a specific race.

------
walrus01
In Afghanistan it's extremely common to have a "last name" that is basically
the same thing as an Icelandic last name.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name)

If your name is Mahmoud, and your father's name is Jawad, your name printed in
English on a passport might be:

Mahmoud Jawad-e

It literally just means son of Jawad.

Other people have family names that are specific to the region where their
family is historically from. Met more than a few people whose last name is
"Parwane", which literally just means from Parwan province.

This lady literally didn't have a last name and picked her own, it translates
as "friend of humans".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmHQYV127QA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmHQYV127QA)

------
wtmt
The insistence on a surname is quite annoying for people who don't have one or
use one. In India, there are many cultures where a surname or family name
isn't used or isn't passed down from one generation to another and to the next
and so on. There are cultures where a surname is used. But what's very common
across the country is addressing people by their first (or only) names whether
or not one is close to them. Even in writing (except in newspapers and TV),
it's common to refer to people by their first (or only) names or to use the
person's full name.

Most websites that need a name assume that everyone has a last name and make
it mandatory. What's more ridiculous is that this habit is prevalent even in
places where it may be uncommon (like in some parts of India)! Even Jesus
didn't really have a surname that was used everywhere. Jews in those times
(and for a much longer period) didn't have surnames either.

Instead of celebrating and appreciating the diversity among humans and human
naming conventions, today's world thrives on forms that want to normalize
things. It's just laziness and/or ignorance and/or unwillingness to learn.

See "Falsehood programmers believe about names". [1]

[1]: [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
programmers-...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-names/)

~~~
Iv
There was a stand up comedian of Algerian descent explaining that situation
when the French administration tries to do the census of their colony. The
custom was to use your father's and grandfather's name as a name. Problem is,
many people, including brothers would have the most popular name (I think it
was Mohammed). Having a Mohammed, son of Mohammed, grandson of Mohammed was
common.

So the French admninistration gave arbitrary names to families. Algerians were
rightfully angry about that.

But then it got me thinking about what kind of acceptable solution you would
have. There are naming conventions that are good enough to keep track of
people in a village of mid-sized town. Given name + Parents names.

Family names start appearing when you need to be able to identify a person
unambiguously among the population of a big country. Some places never went
through that phase, yet being able to identify unambiguously a person who may
have changed address or even country is perfectly valid.

In the absence of a universal ID scheme, I don't see a way around forcing a
working pattern into every culture, with the acceptance that some things may
be lost in translation.

Jesus would have registered as "Jesus Bin Yoseph" to get a passport or an
Amazon Prime account. His (hypothetical) children would have "Bin Jesus" as
their family names.

Hopefully one day we have a UID for humans that can be mapped to a variety of
naming scheme, but we are not there yet.

~~~
smaccona
Having a full combination of first + family name doesn't really help for
identification purposes, though: "John Smith" may not be quite as
unidentifiable/ambiguous as "Mohammed, son of Mohammed, grandson of Mohammed",
but it's not too far off it either.

In general, websites don't depend on these names for identification; if a site
refused to sign me up because I shared a name with another "Smith, John" then
I would rightly be irritated. So why do (many) sites insist on collection
first and last names separately, as opposed to just a "full name" field that
would be used to address me on the site or via email? Is it purely a data
collection / advertising / monetization thing?

~~~
Iv
It is not perfect, far from it, and the reason why so many Americans have
second names (After all, USA had to Georges Bush as president)

A free form "full name" text could be the solution, but then the problem is
forcing a formatting on it so that one person always puts the same thing in
this field. Should I include second names? Accents? Is that family name first
or second? At least, with clearly labeled fields you are already able to tell
Adam Smith from a Smith Adam.

Webshops usually are happy with name + current address but there are
administrative domains where this is not acceptable.

~~~
philwelch
There are also differences with how surname/given name ordering translates
between languages. For example, a Chinese name like Xi Jinping has Xi as the
surname and is rendered in that order in both Chinese and English. A Japanese
name like Shinzo Abe is rendered in Japanese as Abe Shinzo with Abe as the
surname.

------
LawnboyMax
Interestingly, Galileo's _Sidereus Nuncius_ mentions "Galileo Galileo" on the
cover.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereus_Nuncius](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereus_Nuncius)

I wonder if this is at all related to the question asked in this article.

~~~
schoen
That looks like the Latin ablative case, governed by the preposition "a" in
the previous line. In Latin you can see many different forms of a name
depending on its context in a sentence (the two most common in books' title
pages being the genitive and ablative, roughly meaning 'of' and 'by').

------
camillomiller
In Italy it’s quite common to go with Galileo Galilei, I would say we use name
surname most of the time when we mention him. Maybe it has to do also with how
it rolls out of the tongue nicely for us.

~~~
wirrbel
In German I think we also use Galilei more then Galileo.

~~~
weinzierl
For a German native speaker I feel Galileo Galilei is a tongue breaker. I envy
you Italians...

The US English dictionary in Firefox knows about Galileo but doesn't recognize
Galilei. When I switch to German it is the opposite: Galilei recognized but
Gelileo unknown. This kind of supports your point.

------
blablabla123
Actually in German the transformations named after him are referred by his
last name. (Galilei-Tranformation/Galilei-Invarianz) But in English they are
usually called Galilean transformations.

------
Ayesh
My name has 6 parts.

In Sri Lanka, it's common to have a family name and a surname. Many Sri Lankan
have super long full names that often don't even fit in Western forms.

Further more, my brother and I (who we share both parents) have 4 names that
are common.

In a name like "A B C X Y Z", \- A is often a name from the generation. You
can judge how prestigious the family is by the name. \- B is sometimes not
present, but if it is, it is an adjective to emphasize said A. \- C is often
to indicate a relationship. I don't think we have more than 100 in the
country. \- X and Y are the typical first and middle names. \- Z is the last
name.

One advantage I can think of is that, I can share a flight ticket with my
brother and father!

------
Sharlin
Similarly, it’s Leonardo or Leonardo da Vinci, never ”da Vinci”, a popular
book and movie notwithstanding. ”da Vinci” is not a family name but a moniker
referring to his place of birth, the town of Vinci in Tuscany.

------
lota-putty
Last names, surnames & nicknames were initial attempts of man to address name
collisions.

SMS lingo & keyboards caused this:
[https://www.abbreviations.com/acronyms/FAMOUSPEOPLE](https://www.abbreviations.com/acronyms/FAMOUSPEOPLE)

I hear there are 300 million Hindu gods, someone ought to list them out
somewhere for reference.

~~~
dmckeon
Be careful with that:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_Go...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God)

------
JasonFruit
The interesting thing to me is that we call his father, a lutenist and
composer, Vincenzo Galilei. Maybe there has to be an unbroken tradition of
referring to the person _at all_ ; we've talked about Galileo nonstop for 500
years, but there were a few hundred years there where almost everyone had
forgotten Vincenzo.

------
gdy
In Russia it's just Galilei or sometimes Galileo Galilei, but never Galileo.

------
lisper
Having a single name is quite common nowadays, particularly among celebrities:
Slash. Bono. Dido. Cher. Sting. Prince. I really wonder what it says in their
passports. And what about The Rock? Is his first name "The" and his last name
"Rock"?

~~~
abtinf
Is this a serious comment? Have you really never heard of stage names? Or even
bothered to look at any of their Wikipedia pages?

~~~
lisper
Yes, it was a serious comment, and yes, I'm aware of stage names. I suppose I
could have said that you can think of "Galileo" as Galileo Galilei's stage
name, except that he wasn't a performer.

------
coldtea
Because we'd all be starting singing Bohemian Rhapsody with each citation of
his name...

------
tempodox
Anecdotal aside: I refer to the creator of the Lambda Calculus as “Alonzo”
most of the time. When I'm in the mood for tongue-in-cheek, I might even call
him “Saint Alonzo”. He is, after all, my second hero after Leonhard Euler.

------
sandinmytea
This is mistaken.

Galli meant "castrado/castrated"

There is consistent effort apparently to hide this fact for it relates
powerfully to the realities of "Galilee" and what it means to be "Galilean"
and where that all really was.

------
bonoboTP
In Hungary it's Galilei.

------
bitwize
tl;dr for many of the same reasons we don't use Linus's.

------
galaxyLogic
I wonder what the expression "one whose name must not be spoken" really is
about. Why are there such things or people, or are there?

Recently I've noticed a name which must not be pronounced in vain is "Alexa".
If you talk about her she always interrupts with a lengthy diatribe. It has
lead to a situation in my family where we speak like "Why don't you ask "you
know who" to play that song for you?"

~~~
aasasd
Afaik a name was/is believed to have the power to summon a supernatural being
that it identifies. God and the devil both have a dozen or more euphemisms.
(I've also heard about a rather non-Christiany belief of ‘true names’ having
command over some beings, but not sure that it's not a modern fantasy
invention.)

Dunno about material beings, but hiccups are believed in some places to be
caused by someone remembering you.

~~~
henrikschroder
It was absolutely a thing, and the best example is that the old Indo-European
word for bear is eradicated in Northern European languages, because it was
thought that the true name of the animal would summon it, and bears were not
something you wanted around.

So instead of using the taboo name, everyone used the noa name for the animal,
a euphemism, which is why "bear" actually means "the brown one". In Slavic
languages, a common euphemism the "the honey eater" \- "medved".

The original word exists in Southern European languages, "ours" in French,
"orso" in Italian, coming from "ursus" in Latin, and "arctos" in Greek.

Another example is the word for wolf, which exists in that form in most
European languages (wolf, ulv, vlk, lobo), but in Swedish the common word is
"varg", which is a noa-name, a euphemism, meaning cattle-killer. "ulv" still
exists in Swedish, but is seen as an archaic fairy-tale word

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
There is also the French saying: "quand on parle du loup, il sort du bois"
[1]. Literally "when you speak of the wolf he comes out of the woods", known
in English as "speak of the devil".

__________

[1] Also: "... on en voit la queue" or "le nez", i.e. "you see his tail" or
"his nose".

