{"id":471,"date":"2013-08-26T21:08:25","date_gmt":"2013-08-27T01:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/2013\/08\/26\/the-sun-never-sets\/"},"modified":"2013-08-26T21:08:25","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T01:08:25","slug":"the-sun-never-sets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/the-sun-never-sets\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sun Never Sets"},"content":{"rendered":"

…on the British Empire. That is to=
\n say, with the heydey of the worldwide British Empire now an item of the=
\n past, one lasting result is the spread of the English language. Even w=
\nhile technology (international forms of communication such as telegraph,=
\n telephone, radio, television, the Internet) certainly helped spread the=
\n English language, it's still true that the colonial days of the Emp=
\nire planted the tongue all over the globe. … <\/p>\n

Or as Will=
\niam Shakespeare put it, a rose by any other name would still smell as sw=
\neet. What is in a name? Here at DWU in Madang, the school is erecting =
\na new office building. This is one of those deals wherein they purchase=
\nd the entire building as a kit, from China. With the concrete foundatio=
\nn finished and all of the frames and girders on site, two Chinese civil =
\nengineers have come to guide and assist the university work force as the=
\ny put the pieces together. I met one of them; on introduction he said t=
\no me, "My name is Jack. Well, that's not my Chinese name, but =
\nit's what I use when working with English speaking people."
I understood perfectly what he means. I have a Chinese friend w=
\nho goes both by Zili or by Neil. Some years ago I took a bus tour in Th=
\nailand; our tour guide told us her name was Virginia. We finally did ge=
\nt her to agree that was not really her name. She has and uses a Thai na=
\nme, but uses Virginia whenever working as a tour guide. (We never did g=
\net her Thai name out of her, though we tried.)<\/p>\n

One of the thing=
\ns that surprised me, I think, was finding out the names of the people wi=
\nth whom we interact here. I can't say exactly what I expected, or m=
\nore correctly I suppose I should say I hadn't given it all that much=
\n thought. We have met or seen in movies people from other parts of the =
\nworld and I suppose in some subconscious sense we may have an inkling of=
\n what to expect, say, among first names of Australians we might meet. W=
\nhat sort of names would you expect to find in Papua New Guinea?
The following list of given names comes from real folks here at Divin=
\ne Word University.<\/p>\n

\nAbraham         Frank           Martin\nAlfred          James           Michael\nArthur          Janet           Pauline\nCaroline        Jason           Ryan\nChris           Jenny           Sandra\nDavid           Jermaine        Tanya\nDoris           Jessica         Timmy\nEbby            Judith          Vanessa\nElliot          Lois            Wendy\nEsther          Lorraine        Wesley<\/pre>\n
The above list includes=
\n both students' and staff members' names.  Three of them are Aus=
\ntralian; I won't tell you which.<\/p>\n
The first time I discussed=
\n this topic of the very "European" or Western-sounding given n=
\names of so many Papua New Guineans, the other person replied that most o=
\nf these names have been in their respective families for several generat=
\nions.  Of course that makes sense but then again it still makes the poin=
\nt, doesn't it?<\/p>\n
We also have "more expected" sound=
\ning names here, such as these from Papua New Guinea: Belavi, Raunu; or I=
\ntaly: Giorgio; or Poland: Iwona, Zdzislaw; or India: Amuthageetha, Karth=
\nikeyan; or the Phillippines: Asuncion, Luis; or Sri Lanka: Chandana, Cha=
\nrith.  Besides all these, we have met or work with also folks from the U=
\nK, New Zealand, Germany, Ireland, Canada and Nepal.  (Eh, did I leave an=
\nyone out?) <\/p>\n
So — our names.  So very important to us.  They co=
\nme from many places and many different sounding tongues.  And yet, when =
\nyou get into exploring it all sometimes you come away very surprised.
English truly is the worldwide medium of communication today.  An=
\nd I say it to our lack: too bad for so very many Americans who cannot sp=
\neak any other language.
3D''<\/span>=
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
…on the British Empire. That is to= say, with the heydey of the worldwide British Empire now an item of the= past, one lasting result is the spread of the English language. Even w= hile technology (international forms of communication such as telegraph,= telephone, radio, television, the Internet) certainly helped spread the= English language, it's … Continue reading The Sun Never Sets<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oUw6-7B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}