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In the case of European nations it would be specific to each nations use of the roman alphabet or others. If the way teh roman althabet is used for the official language there is radically different then names from nearby nations I would imagine that immigrants would change their names to the spellings of their new nation once nationalized (gaining citizenship there) but maybe they would retain their previous nation/peoples last names and first names or religon. It really depends on teh nations.

In fact, that's exactly what happened in the past. Just a few examples:

Nowicky->Nowitzki (Polish->German)
Markwart->Marquard (German->French)
etc.

I agree with your sentiment on the hair colors of Asian people, and Japanese in particular. I had a blonde Japanese SF until recently. While that sure was fun, I don't think there are that many blonde Japanese guys around (I don't know a single Japanese who is blonde, and I do know quite a bunch). Giving them a 1% chance of being blonde or ginger seems ok to me, but any more than that sure seems very very unlikely.

Except that the German version is not German, but really a butchered Polish one. So no, the sensibilities in Europe aren't that much better. Or at least they weren't until the end of WW2 and the foundation of the EU. And even then, there's still lots of people who really aren't bilingual, or, at most, know some English and their own language but nothing else.

Yeah what he said^

The last name Albrit(sp?) was/is German and now in US you don't find that as often as you find it's better sounding variation Albright. What ever sounds better off the tongue in US(don't know about Australia as I am not from there) people use.

Last edited by oriolekid at 1/24/2011 10:12:02 PM

I guess for the USA it is a regional thing because where I used to live there were many bilingual people. Overall the 2005 census found 9% to be bilingual, a number which I guess has gone up slightly in the 5+ years since.

Yes, I agree with you. I was just saying that I think that somewhere like San Francisco which has a large number of both immigrants and 2nd/3rd generation Asian-, Hispanic-, and Russian- Americans who speak their parents' native language is probably more bilingual than somewhere like Denver or Milwaukee. And that Arizona is more bilingual than Kansas.

The Australian name database is hilarious. Yes I do realise that all the names are real and Australia is maybe the most multi-cultural nation in the world. It is just funny when you look at an Australian basketball team in Buzzerbeater they will have 1 each of Mongolian, Icelandic, Nigerian, Liberian, Pakistani, Guatemalian etc names all of in total which probably make up less than 1% of the population and 0.00001% of the basketballers. Whereas the half of the population that comes from a British background probably has one name on the roster. Most Aussie basketballers tend to have if not British then Eastern European names - Andrew Bogut is the most recent example.

As for the 2.5% of the population that come from an indigenous background I have only ever once seen one player that seemed like an Aboriginal or Torries Straight Islander which is funny considering 2 out of the 4 Australian players recently playing in the NBA are (Patty Mills and Nathan Jawai).

And I agree with a previous person that noted how funny it is to see African or Asian teams full of players with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Australia uses 55% from the Australian/NZ list and 14% from the English list, so these databases account for nearly 70% of the Australian players.

I don't think it upsets or bothers anyone. It is just funny that 50% of Aussie players have names I have never, ever heard before and you almost never see a Jones, Brown or Smith.