We Heard What He Said............

[10ClarionSt]

.........but the text said said different. In an old b&w film recently, a military officer said "I cannot have people being called by their Christian names",
but the text on the screen said "I cannot have people being called by their first names". Why the change? Who are we trying to placate with that?

[goodgoalie]

BCE and CE might well get round actually referring to Christ, but when does BCE end and CE begin? At the birth of Christ!

[Buenchico]

PS: At least the subtitling on the film you saw was somewhat better than on one I watched on TV in Singapore:

Man A comes into bedroom to find Man B in bed with his wife. Rants and raves in Chinese. No subtitles.

Man B shouts back. No subtitles.

Man A shouts some more. No subtitles.

Man B yells as he jumps out of bed and runs out of the room. No subtitles.

Man A grabs a convenient sword and chases after Man B, shouting all the time. No subtitles.

Man A catches up with Man B and they have a lengthy face-to-face argument. No subtitles until the very end when this 'subtitle' finally appears on the screen: "He is very angry".

;-)

[Buenchico]

GG: Atheists like me don't recognise the word 'Christ', as it means 'the anointed one'. We refer only to the birth of Jesus which, according to most historians, was around 5BCE (plus or minus a year or two), so strictly speaking the BCE/CE system doesn't actually use his birth as a reference point anyway. (As a mathematician, I'd also argue that whatever reference point is used ought to be year 0, rather than having the next yea after 1BCE being 1CE!)

[douglas9401]

Year Zero's been tried with negative results.

[naomi24]

I’m a non-believer but I use BC and AD rather than the newly required CE and BCE and I shall continue to do so. I think it an utter nonsense to change established terms into something that means exactly the same thing for no other reason than the original is frowned upon by a politically correct army of people bent on frowning upon anything that doesn’t suit their pernickety agenda.

[vetuste_ennemi]

//Lots of terms related to Christianity are now (thankfully) disappearing from our language. For example my friend (who is a dedicated Roman Catholic) always uses 'CE' and 'BCE' instead of 'AD' and 'BC' when referring to dates, as I also try to do//

Can anyone explain why so many people have (what to seems to me) a pathological determination to separate our culture - not other people's, of course, Heaven forfend) from its roots?

[Peter Pedant]

// It makes more sense to interpret it as 'first name'. That covers everyone.//

except of some the surname er comes first - so Prez Kim of Korea - that's his family name
everyone really knew that
and someone else thinks that the first registry of names was 1837 -
nope that is the first centralised record
but everyone really knew THAT of course

1536 - reformation - Henry VIII ordered that baptisms be registered in parishes but this was repeated by Elizabeth showing that it wasnt being done. Everyone who had done family trees knows that it is just a list of names (a bit like the 1841 census). I am not sure what happened in the non Anglican Churches - each one to his own I suppose

accuracy? - o hell this is AB for chrissakes

[Peter Pedant]

// Atheists like me don't recognise the word 'Christ', as it means 'the anointed one'. ........ used ought to be year 0, rather than have the next year after 1BCE as 1CE!)//

oh god ( or oh Gawd!) I dont know where to begin [writes a pedantic non-mathematician]
why do mathematicians leave logic at the door when they post in AB ?
Jim is as bad with his glorious - "who dat Brouwer den?" an impt maff philosopher a few weeks ago

Christ means anointed and I dont fink he's anointed (Chris' point 1)....see above
so when Elizabeth ( sorry Elizabeff) was anointed with the holy Chrism at her coronation 1953 er AD that is! - Chris was outside with a placard " she is no Queen to me!" along with "She's anointed to 59m people but not to me!"

this leads onto complete confusion about dating - and whether you have to be a God ( oh Gawd!) to be dated from. All the AB islamophobes should holler - "what about Islam?" Yup dated from an event - hegira - the flight (by a particular person. So dating from a person is as good as dating from an event - no one I note has objected to islamic dating.

and anyway - wasnt the christian era counted up by Foo-Foo Exiguus or someone ? Around 800 ( er AD - screams of horror!) and F Exiguus got it wrong by a few ( 10-20) years ?

and year Zero - AD 0 - did I read right?
Christ ( the anointed one - or not anointed to some) rose on the Third Day
Friday Saturday SUnday - hold it - that is really only two days ....
Yeah but no but - zero wasnt invented for another 1000 years !
Hence no AD 0

Other than that - I thought Chris' post raised some good points
Hi chris - do you realise your name comes from -"Carrier of the anoined one"? - you know the one who er wasnt anointed according to you

its a funny old world

[ABerrant]

"You had the christian name on your birth certificate way way before any baptism; if you even had one. Clearly the baptism is irrelevant."

From the very first, British Isles birth certificates (including Catholic Ireland) indicated "Name, if any" of child, "Name and Surname" of father and "Name and Maiden Surname" of mother.

No official registration documents, nor establishing statutes, made mention of a "Christian name".

[jno]

as naomi says, subtitle text is often abbreviated - they usually try to restrict it to a maximum of two lines so it doesn't hide too much of the picture. If a word is even one character too long, it'll be shortened.

[vetuste_ennemi]

//...zero wasnt invented for another 1000 years !
Hence no AD 0//

I didn't know that. Did you?

[vetuste_ennemi]

Talking of sub-titles, anybody see the film "Onibaba"? Yonks ago now.

Story of two women in mediaeval war-torn Japan. Mother and daughter. Both widows. Earn living by luring samurai into pit, killing them and selling the armour off on Bargain Hunt.

Beautifully shot in black and white. But with a totally dissonant sub-titular text cast in slang American. At one point hot younger widow screaming "I kove you like crazy".

[vetuste_ennemi]

No, it wasn't "kove", was it it?

[woofgang]

as I left work, we were switching over to "given name" and "family name" It makes sense really to use something that everyone can understand.

[10ClarionSt]

Thanks everyone. I enjoyed reading all the responses. It probably was changed to shorten the text, but I just thought it a bit odd that it was that one word. Hey Ho!