If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Rate Thread | Display Modes |
#30
|
|||
|
|||
OT: Microsoft Rewards? (now OT: grammar!)
"Wolf K" wrote in message
... donors, who like to see their names on buildings and letterheads. That reminds me of something I noticed when I was over in the USA (Boston area, visiting my sister and her family who were living there at the time). On buildings which are named after benefactors, and on people's name badges on their office doors and on letterheads etc) there's much more use of people's middle initials than in the UK. Here, a middle name is something that is rarely used apart from official forms which require all your names. But in the USA, it almost seems like a badge of honour to flaunt your middle initial: no-one is just "John Smith" or "Dave Jones" - they are all "John H Smith" or "Dave A Jones" - even for uncommon names where the middle name isn't need to avoid ambiguity. And there's this habit, which the UK perceives as being very American, of a father, son and grandson all having the same first name and having to be distinguished by suffixes "John Smith II", "John Smith III" etc. Could be worse, though: in some European countries (France, Spain), you get men whose middle name is a woman's (possibly their mother's or grandmother's). JosĂ© MarĂ*a Olazábal, Jean-Marie le Pen etc. That's a bit too close to "A Boy Named Sue" for British tastes :-) We all have our national peculiarities. I'm sure we Brits do. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | Rate This Thread |
|
|