Quoting Yoav Nir <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
There are after all people in the US with names like Pfeifer and Nguyen. There's good reason to set aside phonotactics rules for names.
It's my opinion that in Lojban this is the role of a "la'o" name. A name marked with only "la" is a name which has been Lojbanized. In all languages people accept small changes to their names (or even drastic ones) in order to fit them into what local people are capable of pronouncing. This distinction between a name as it is truly pronounced, and a name as it is adopted into the sound of another language, is one of the many distinctions Lojban makes more explicitly than other languages.
I also would like to say in reference to the matter of having to end names on a consonant, that there appears to be a strong (if informal & optional) tradition here in Lojbanistan of using "s" as the default consonant [ka'u] for vowel-ending names. It's my feeling that to a Lojbanic ear, an "s" at the end of a name sounds special, because we know it often has that origin. My handle for many years has been Mungojelly (part of my Discordian holy name "Pope Salmon the Lesser Mungojelly"), which is Lojbanized as "la mungodjelis." I'm happy to accept my "s", and to participate in this Lojbanic tradition [.o'a]. (I would like to hear what the origin of it is, if anyone knows?)
mu'o mi'e la mungodjelis. no'u la bret.
