Fun with technicalities!

[ursula]

Just in case you're not aware of this, the SCA registers names. The SCA guarantees that a registered name will be "unique": of course, the meaning of unique is a complicated issue, especially when we're talking about plausible names for medieval people.

This is a poll about what you think uniqueness ought to mean. This is not a poll about whether names should be unique, nor is it a quiz on the rules as they currently stand; it's a philosophical exercise.

[Poll #1098571]

Comments

[p1kap1ka.livejournal.com]

The issue for me is that if you use just semantically analyzable differences, John FitzAndrew and John MacAndrew will be the same person. Oh, and John Anderson and Jan Andrewiecz. Even though, semantically, all those names mean the same thing, they are sufficiently regionally different that it's unlikely any of those people could have met unless they did some MAJOR travelling.