Using Foreign Letters

[Tatty]

I think Darwin Forest was the name of a school in the area. Phil Bashford would probably know. That's thinking back to the mid-seventies.

[SJ]

I can understand that people find it annoying/rude to have alternative vowels substituted for what should be in their name - at times I have been told that systems "can't handle hyphens" - which resulted in my being called Sarah for the 3 years I was in university, which was a bit irritating as it's not my name.

As for acronyms...I belong to two of the clubs with "silly names" (which I think are quite witty anyway...) and I work at another abbreviation and I am just used to things being like that. Sometimes the initialised form is more well-known than the full name.

I can understand that if we want our sport to become more recognised and more accessible, then displaying on web-pages/race details the location of the club and the word "orienteering" would be useful but it can be practical to use initials - such as on kit, where too many letters won't be read usually (as we might be running like the wind, for instance)

[johnloguk]

Following Mharky's initial rant I was struggling not to slip into a rant back. Not about his premise that we should spell people's names properly, which I totally agree with, but his suggestion that some clubs have silly names, especially as mine was one mentioned.

Before I make my serious point I will have a mini-rant though. To suggest that the Lincoln "club" called itself a "group" so that it made a stupid word is actually wrong. We are a relatively young club, and like many newer clubs the initials we wanted had already been taken. Lakeland are LOC, and even the "silly" spelling of Klub was taken, by London I believe. So that left "group", hence LOG.

Where I totally agree with Mharky again though is that we do alienate so many people with our abbreviations and jargon. Hence whenever I orienteer abroad I try to remember to put my club as "Lincoln". Also, we are in the process of ordering new kit, which will have "Lincoln" written down the back instead of the previous LOG initials. Thanks to Sj's post for reminding me of this.

[Gross]

If you move away from the area can you still be a Branch member of LOG????

[Crispy]

Completely agree with mharky and johnloguk in principal, but would Octavian Droobers instead of OD, actually help much in an overseas competition?

[awk]

I think Darwin Forest was the name of a school in the area. Phil Bashford would probably know. That's thinking back to the mid-seventies.

Dredging long term memory, I think it was based on Charles Darwin school in Biggin Hill. But could be very wrong.

[mharky]

Re: Log>>>

I can see where you are coming from, the problem is caused by the fast we HAVE to use acronyms. There are 9 Swedish clubs with the initials LOK, but it aint a problem, as they are called by their real names, Leksands OK, Ljusdals OK, Lunds OK etc...

OD is a completely different problem, derrived from British eccentricity.

[johnloguk]

I really do agree with you Mharky, the more I think about it I think we should be called Lincoln Orienteers and leave it at that, and maybe everyone else should do the same, just ditch the club/klub etc bit off the end.

As for Gross, dare I suggest that we call our juniors "twigs" or even "nuts"?

[Adventure Racer]

On the original point, maybe it's not something I see as such a big deal since I'm somewhat resigned to the fact that 75%+ of people will mis-spell my name anyway. Even when sending in things like booking forms for them to copy off I often find the tickets come back spelt wrongly. The best ever though was a cheque book from my bank which came in a window envelope with the address slip actually bound in with the cheques. My name was spelt right on the address slip, but not the cheques! (Very diappointed to note that I can't link to a good example on Nopesport, since Brooner managed to spell it right in his report)

The obvious question then being that should banks for instance be expected to cope with names with characters outside the standard 26 used in English?

[Gross]

Lithuanian banks can handle strahge letters.... sure they could cope wy
ith Adwanture Racer

[Tatty]

DFOK was origianlly orienteers from Charles Darwin School and Forest Hills School in south east London according to hubby. Think it was started by a teacher called John Fitton.

[Toni]

At WOC this year I found it strange to see Tania Riabkina in the results - everytime she runs a race it seems to be under a different 'translation' (although I assume the change from Perileva to Ryabkina was through marriage when did Tatiana change to Tania and Ryabkina change to Riabkina).

[SeanC]

Tatty wrote

"DFOK was origianlly orienteers from Charles Darwin School and Forest Hills School in south east London according to hubby. Think it was started by a teacher called John Fitton."

Thanks Tatty and Awk, I knew it was something to do with a school.

RE: the subject of unusual club names/abbreviations. I wonder how much effect they have? When I was a teenager I was a member of a club with a slightly eccentric name. When I talked about O to friends, they always seemed to ask what club I ran for. At this point I would get embarrassed and my enthusiastic description of the sport would stop. Of course I should have been embarrassed about my skin tight jeans and pudding bowl haircut.

I wonder if putting a more full description of a club in results would help sell the sport? A newcomer or journalist looking through results is going to find DFOK, TVOC, SO etc pretty meaningless, but "Dartford", "Southdowns", "Thames Valley" etc. shows that the event has attracted orienteers from far and wide.

[Gross]

"Dartford", "Southdowns", "Thames Valley" etc. shows that the event has attracted orienteers from far and wide.

????????

[HOCOLITE]

At WOC this year I found it strange to see Tania Riabkina in the results - everytime she runs a race it seems to be under a different 'translation' (although I assume the change from Perileva to Ryabkina was through marriage when did Tatiana change to Tania and Ryabkina change to Riabkina).

Don't know about official results but the displayed results were restricted on characters and so there were some odd names on the board depending where they chose to shorten it.