Much Ado About Name Signs
In this 1:25 minute (captioned) video entry, I talk about using name signs and whether we should have a specialized 'name' vocabulary for ASL.
Click here for the Name Signs Translation - English text.
Click here for the Name Signs Transcript - ASL Gloss.
posted by Todd @ 2:13 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
BEG recently gave an illuminating book review of The Book of Name Signs: Naming in American Sign Language by Samuel J. Supalla at her blog. I invite you to check out that blog entry and participate in the discussion.
I myself have a couple of ideas about name signs, but I'll certainly check out other ideas regarding name signs. Such name signs, I truly believe, go deeper than our language; and go to our identity. Stay peeled. :)
Very interesting, because one of the things Supalla describes is indeed a very systematic way of creating name-signs (ANS in particular) and the second half of the book is basically exactly what you ask for: a list of common/accepted names, just like a baby book...
You don't belong to Deaf world!
Like it or not, they will decide it for you! :)
Hi Triomphe L'oeil, This is the first time I've viewed any of your v/blog posts. I enjoyed learning about the meaning behind Triomphe L'oeil. I love your vision. You seem to be achieving what you set out to do.
I wanted to just add, please ignore the comment about you not belonging to the Deaf World from Anonymous. Those kinds of comments are made by blog trolls. Ignore them.
Your vlog is terrific.
~ LaRonda
First, let me second laronda about the anonymous troll.
Second, I have no problems with ASL name signs in the Deaf community. Most name signs of Deaf people are fine. And describing how people look if we've forgotten their English names is the Deaf/ASL way.
You said that "maybe ASL will finally have a 'name' vocabulary." But ASL already has one! You seem to be suggesting that we invent signs for all English names. For example, there will be one sign for John, another for Johnny, another for Johnnie, another for Jon, another for Jonathan. This will be a problem because I bet that there are more English names than there are ASL name signs.
But that's not the only problem. Why stop at first names? We would need name signs for last names too. Obviously in many cases it is not enough to just give somebody's first name. ("My favorite writer is John." "John who?" "That fella who keeps writing about the poor and downtrodden." "Oh, the blue-eyed, hard-drinking one?")
So inventing signs for first and last names is not worth the time and effort. It seems best to leave ASL alone here. :)
And come to think of it, practically everything about ASL as a language is as perfect as English is. The problems are mainly social. It is a minority language used by people who do not have social/political power in the US, and those people who do have power not only use spoken English but go great lengths to opress ASL, as have always been clear and still is in educational and medical settings.
First anonymous commentor- I noticed the smiley. :)
Second anonymous commentor- Thank you for your ad hoc analysis on name signs. I do find your point about ASL being a minority language being subsumed by a larger, more 'opressive' language to be an astute observation.
Thanks to all who replied! My apologies for being late; I was in NYC for the weekend.
Stumbled across your website...great seeing you again! This whole thing about name signs was a dilemma for us when we were expecting our child...we went back and forth on what name sign we should give our kid. We finally decided, since she's the fourth deaf generation, that we'd stick with what our ancestors did: give her an ANS. Besides, we can't remember all the DNS for all our friends' kids, but we can easily remember the ANS ones. So, we decided to do what our ancestors did and gave her E-on-chest. Intriguing discussion here.
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