Detail #28: Names

It is fairly common in western names to have first-names followed by family names. In some cultures the pattern - still present in Chinese and Hungarian, for instance - is reversed, with the family name first. Hence in the name Mao Tse-Tung the first word signifies the family, and Tse-Tung is his individual. This should be obvious with regard to the North Korean leaders - they haven't been very lacking in imagination by giving all their sons the same first name and tucked on some random middle-names.

Some Germanic areas in Northern Europe still have family-names first in the usual spoken vernacular, (Dalarna, parts of Österbotten), Finnish (and afaict Estonian) does it as well, even though in all of these, the family name goes last in the official, legally recognized name. Apparently, some Swedish families have managed to arrange some exceptional right to have the reverse order in their official papers - something I would love to do as well, since my home-village the reverse order is still very alive (although, funny enough, there's a tendency for many there to have two family names; the traditional one and the official one. My traditional family name is Låuses, from the dialectal Swedish word for (maritime) pilot, whereas my official name is Finnish and has quite a different history behind it).

Now, how about a language in which names do not have an order? You have four or five names, and there is no difference to the order in which they are given. There may be a hierarchy as to which would be used in which registers, but there is no information about you encoded in the order of your names. The cultural hierarchy of order could be something like 'names that sound like those of [important cultural heroes] go first in state-business contexts, names that sound like those of important saints go first in temple rituals, names shared with your close ancestors go first in family ceremonies'.

In addition, this could be nice for some sandhi-processes or such acting on the names, giving various surface forms:

Gar Tek Dho Gan -> Got`:eðowã

Tek Gan Gar Dho -> Teg:aŋãl`o

Gan Dho Tek Gar -> Ganðoteg:ar

or maybe something like

Gama Welli Nau Mes -> Gamawel:inome

Welli Gama Mes Nau -> Wel:ijames:au

Gama Nau Mes Welli -> Gam:aunesol:i (Nau is assimilated into the -ma of the previous name, and the following Mes is dissimilated so as to avoid several syllables beginning in m- in a sequence.)