If somebody has just one name in a culture where everybody has just one name, for example Javanese culture, is it still a mononym?
I remember when I was teaching a group of Javanese who were going off to the US to study. Of course all the forms wanted given name and surname, but they only had one name. In the end we just told them to put that name down for both, so that they ended up as Suhendra Suhendra or Dewi Dewi, or whatever.
Bingley
... not to mention Brazilian soccer players.
is it still a mononym?
Of course it's still a mononym but the native language may well not have any special word for it. We might refer to the culture as a mononymic culture.
And Amerindian names...Sacagawea, Geronimo, etc. (and, of course, their English translations...i.e. Sitting Bull. But, if a native language mononym is translated into two words, like Sitting Bull, does it still qualify as a mononym?)
fwiw, amerindian (or american indian) mononym(s) turns up zero (0) google hits.
zero (0) google hits
Mononym all by its lonesome only gets 38 hits. mononym soccer gets one hit and that only because the word "soccer" was a hotlink on a page about sports (in this case basketball) stars keeping feuds in the family.
I would think that Sitting Bull would qualify as a compound word in the form of a proper noun, therefore being a mononym.
There are three types of compound words (i.e., closed form, hyphenated form and open form), and Sitting Bull would be an open form of a proper noun and compound word. And, if a word, then a mononym.
Just my opinion.
I agree. It's not like his name was Sitting and he was a member of the Bull family.
William the Conquerer awarded Anglo-Saxons last names for tax purposes.
I wonder how the Javanese government manages its tax records.
"Just gimme the tax, ma'am."
Joe Payday
awarded Anglo-Saxons last names for tax purposes.
Congratulations! You have a last name now! You can pay taxes!!!
Oh, how can I ever thank you, Mr Mamzer?
Goes by your ID card no. and every taxpayer also has a taxpayer's index number.
Bingley