Friday, May 05, 2006

Linguistic biases   posted by Razib @ 5/05/2006 08:19:00 PM
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A few days ago I asked why someone called me "zeeb." The reason I ask is this: "zeeb" is a common truncation of my name...the other common one is "raz." But "zeeb" outnumbers "raz" by about 25:1. Additionally, "zeeb" is the default preference of many people who I know who don't know each other, both on the web and in my regular life, so it isn't pure memetics. Additionally, as for my name, "Razib," it is actually Rajib, the Bengali form of the name Rajeev/Rajiv. It became Razib because of issues with regards to pronounciation with my kindergarten teacher. I thought this was an anomaly until I got on to the web ran into other people with the name Razib, most of them from Bangladesh (check Friendster for what I mean).

I don't know what to make of all of this. But I thought I'd make my curiosity on this issue clear.