Talk:Mongolian name

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I just wondered somewhat over the surnames part of this article. I am not aware that Borjigin or other clan names have become rampant for little children in Outer Mongolia. Admitted, Mongolian ultranationalism as a means of political distraction is on the rise, but as far as I have experienced, fathers' names were and are the norm. And while I don't even have much of a clue how this is officially regulated at the time being (a combination of fathers' name and clan name seems to occur in Inner Mongolia and might be possible here as well, with either one component or the fathers' name (or name of one parent, but under exactly which circumstances) obligatory?), the information given would certainly have to be confirmed - or abandoned. G Purevdorj 18:42, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

This is a misunderstanding that needs to be corrected. "Borjigin" is not a surname in the western sense. It is a "clan name". While it is true that the authorities keep a registry of those again (they were supressed during socialism), they are of purely symbolic nature with no relevance at all in everyday life. Actually, most clan name associations nowadays are fictional, because the information of which family belongs to which clan has largely been lost. After registration opened again, almost everybody ran to register one of the two or three most prestigious names, with Borjigin leading the pack by a huge margin. --Latebird (talk) 22:13, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I hope it's more clear now. Some of it might still need better sourcing. Yaan (talk) 23:15, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's a real improvement. Sourcing wouldn't be bad, but isn't that pressing. Only the point about Innermongolian names is too one-sided. We have Gu. Jorigtu and Borjigin Badmaodsar. Thus, I don't understand what is meant by "usually". For the time being, "often" will do a better job. (Of course, you could also write more precisely on this point.) G Purevdorj —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs) 10:23, 25 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is not the place to complain but I don't like the fact that in western countries I have to be addressed by my father's name and in writing my own name is lost somewhere as a single letter. I would prefer to use my own name as last name. Temur (talk) 00:26, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you should make a point of correcting people whenever they get it wrong ;-). Seriously, though, I think older passports (at least until 1997) displayed the ovog (i.e. patronymic) as Given name and ner as Surname. Yaan (talk) 21:16, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is true my old passport was like that and all my documents were according to that ordering of the names. But when I renewed my passport they changed my name and everything is mess now. Temur (talk) 07:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Posted an issue about name order at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (names and titles). -- Jao (talk) 20:30, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some IP just spent some effort into explaining the usage of the genitive suffix in more detail. I guess this could al be formulated better, unfortunately I think these new additions help much. Sentences like "Therefore the name "Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj," can also be written technically as "Elbegdorj Tsakhia" like "John Smith."" seem quite misleading: if you write Elbegdorj Tsakhia, everybody will think Elbegdorj is the patronymic!

I guess the long paragraph on "Surnames" (why this particular title, btw?) is a bit unintuitive, but making up strange analogies or adding assumptions about what people think is not the way to go here, IMHO. In my experience the chief problems with Mongolian names (partially enhanced by Mongolian passport designs) are that patronymics and personal names get mixed up, that Mongolians are referred to by heir patronymics when it should be by their personal names etc. Adding to that confusion is counterproductive IMHO.

Maybe a table could be a better way to adress the issues?

Yaan (talk) 16:28, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

reverted (with some minor additions) for now. Yaan (talk) 16:28, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really believe that Inner Mongolians are "not allowed to" use their ovogs. What is probably meant is that they don't appear in any official document. But that does not necessarily mean that you are going to run into trouble when you tell someone else your clan name. Yaan (talk) 15:41, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly not. There are several publications that contain some clansnames. I'd like to see an official or scientific source (be it in Chinese or any language) for these claims. The language of the new contribution is a bit too polemic as well. The differences between Chinese and Mongolian interests here are more likely to lie in the past, say, in the years of the cultural revolution. The reintroduction of clansnames today would be quite pointless and lead to a Korean-style system where "Borjigin" accounts for as much as "Kim" and "Park" together. The disambiguation works differently today, say, Tom Chuluu, as opposed to Uhaantai Chuluu. Anyway, almost the complete article is unsourced which is quite a problem if you want to challenge any specific claim. G Purevdorj (talk) 16:29, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We can just change the relevant passage. I don't know where one would find a source for that "XXX" business, although I definitely would want to keep it in the article. Yaan (talk) 15:28, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the last part of the following sentence from the article:

[...] Mongols have sometimes been given Russian names like Alexander or Sasha, or mixed ones like Ivaanjav; also from Russian, Yolk, 'little fir tree', seems a bit strange.

If anybody can work out what it was supposed to mean, feel free to work it back into the correct paragraph. Thanks! – Spudtater (talk • contribs) 20:50, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done. I'm not aware of Yolk, but Ivaanjav was easy enough to explicate. G Purevdorj (talk) 21:54, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yolk (little fir tree or X-mas tree) is the name of one of the popular TV personals. So, it can remain there. --GenuineMongol (talk) 09:15, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's not yet an explanation. Is it from Russian? It has to be contextualized not only as a Mongolian name, but as of relevance to this article. G Purevdorj (talk) 11:47, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is anybody willing to work these in as inline references to pertinent parts of the article? This would be a lot more useful. – Spudtater (talk • contribs) 21:10, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It would be more useful, but at least as far as I know this article came into being somewhat independently from these sources (except for that one of Taube). The problem is that a lot of good texts on this subject is difficult to access in Europe, but adding sources to this article is on my inofficial list of to-do things - some day. G Purevdorj (talk) 21:53, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Yaan! Your new link might is from a government agency, which is nice. If you like, you might consider to make a table (two columns) of the most common 20 names in Mongolian (together with numbers) and integrate it into the article. G Purevdorj (talk) 23:24, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Like now? I'm not 100% sure on the male/female stuff, and it is a bit OR-ish anyway. But I thought it might be somewhat interesting for the general reader. Yaan (talk) 13:50, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Made some corrections. But the approach might do some good. Consider deleting all parts of this article that are not properly referenced! I've already been considering writing an article on this topic and publishing it just to get a few references for this article! But I don't have the time. You may look forward to an article on first-person address terms in Khalkha, though. G Purevdorj (talk) 14:59, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is an article by some well known Polish ethnographer whose name I can't remember (Sławoi ...?) in Mongolen (1989 exhibition catalogue), which might be used as a source for some parts of the article. I think the title is something with Geburt and Tod and/or Lebenszyklus. I am sure there are also some Mongolian publications, in fact I think I have a short one at home. Yaan (talk) 12:35, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is no little amount of stuff on the composition of names, but I am aware of few articles on their use. E.g. do you have an article where it is stated that Inner Mongolians may use syllable-initial shortened syllables of two-morphemic names as a conventionalized term of address among friends, e.g. Erdenimöngke -> Emö, or that name-initial shortened syllables are used in combination with honorific terms of address like bagsi, e.g. Batutulga bagsi -> Ba bagsi? If you have such an article, let me know. A classification of terms of address and their usage in Khalkha would be thrilling as well. Oh, bas neg yum helii. Huvaari bichij ogsond bayarlalaa! G Purevdorj (talk) 12:58, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Anybody want to work on the name issues at

Explained on the respective talkpage. G Purevdorj (talk) 06:59, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I follow the reference provided by this article; and I found the destination page have no information that relevant to this article, or anything about Mongolia at all. It is actually a blog about profit from penny stocks with seemingly legitimate URL.

I will deal with this in the way that Wikipedia. But I wish someone could replace or add sources on current popular Mongolian names. Poom3619 (talk) 09:23, 10 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Edit : I read Wikipedia guide on fixing dead link and made an effort to recover the source, but it is in Mongolian and I seem unable to find the page about popular names. Poom3619 (talk) 09:45, 10 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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