in reply to Re^3: Do you have a middle name?
in thread Do you have a middle name?

Hmm this translation looks far better than the German version ...

I think you successfully backengineered the intention of the joker who created this myth. 8)

Seems like someone stuffed a paragraph of some sci-fi into bablefish and erased the whitespaces and you got the original back. Believe me the translation is senseless crap and certainly no family name (and it's supposed to be German, not Afrikaans, Danish or even Yiddish)!

If an American official really supplied such a passport he was either joking or drunk...

And if the Book of Records really printed it ... ehm ... well maybe that's why they named it Guinness... ;-)

Cheers Rolf

UPDATE: Wow there is not only a WP-Page it's even translated into 5 languages with plenty of Germans complaining in the discussion-page =).

Wouldn't be surprised if he's going to win a nobelprize next week and becomes governor of California shortly after...

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Re^5: Do you have a middle name?
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Dec 03, 2009 at 01:17 UTC

    Did you find these references on the scanned pages of a books published in 1954 and 1957 respectively?

    There are also a bunch of links (at the bottom of the WP page), that (apparently) link to the scanned pages of newspapers around the same time. They don't work for me, but maybe you need to sign up to view them.

    If it was a hoax, it was a damned elaborate one that way pre-dated the internet.

    Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
    "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
    In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]
      If it was a hoax, it was a damned elaborate one that way pre-dated the internet.

      Yeah excellent! It gets more and more amusing ... 8)

      I don't know if he is really listed in GBR from 1978 with the 600 letter name, but it's definitely a hoax which is quite obvious for German-speakers. Spaceship? 1904? Come on!

      The 600 letter version is full of typical errors for English-speakers translating with a dictionary and by far too modern for a family name.

      Some retarded spirits even try to use it as a prove that ETs visited Earth 12000 years ago! (NOTE: German was the first language ...)

      Already the given names are almost all very English (1904? Kenneth? Irvin? Lloyd? Quincy? Yancy? Why not IceCube?).

      And even the shortened 35 letter version is only likely when hyphens or spaces got lost in translation, because they are placenames you can't easily combine.

      I'd rather say they are typos, or the immigration officer was too lazy to copy and even concatenated the birthplace and in reality it's "Wolf Schlegel from Steinhausen born in Bergedorf" (both placenames in northern Germany)! Anyway I doubt that 35 letters are long enough for a record. (BUT: there are even Facebook people with that name, with one f in the "dorf" hihihi =)

      Germantown is the oldest German settlement in America (320 years), I suppose it's a Philly inside-joke and folklore to fool GBR and other outsider. xD

      Have a look at Museum of Hoaxes, seems like this Myth has been heavily copied.

      I'd only be interested to know if there is really a poor family named Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff living in Philadelphia... 8)

      Cheers Rolf

[reply]
        Have a look at Museum of Hoaxes, seems like this Myth has been heavily copied.

        I saw that also, but you apparently didn't notice the feint line at the top of the page:

        Status: Seems to be true
        Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
        "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
        In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]
        "Already the given names are almost all very English (1904? Kenneth? Irvin? Lloyd? Quincy? Yancy? Why not IceCube?)."

        Keep in mind, this is America. I've met a Heidi Sanchez, a Karl O'Brien, and a Michelle Pfaffenberger. We are a melting pot, and names are one place where we've melted pretty well.

        (As an aside, my favorite name of all time was that of a former college basketball player at Memphis State: Baskerville Holmes.)

        --
        tbone1, YAPS (Yet Another Perl Schlub)
        And remember, if he succeeds, so what.
        - Chick McGee

[reply]

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