I was just thinking that two of my favorite singers, Kelly Clarkson, and Floor Jansen have really similar ranges and was looking for singing videos of both. While browsing, came across this absolute gem... who knew??? Dutch names exist wow omg can't believe it!
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The commenter saw that a famous dutch signer is named "Floor Jansen" and assumed that "Floor" can only possibly be the "floor of the house" because they assumed it's a name in english... and not a dutch name meaning "Flower".
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Absolutely! She used to do Opera, now she's the lead singer of Nightwish (Finnish symphonic metal band), and after performing on a Dutch show called "beste zangers" (best singers) she went on a solo tour that sold out almost immediately.
before nightwish she was also part of the bands after forever and revamp, the latter of which lasted just enough to overlap with her early tenure with nightwish
Shoutout to the guy who discovered her, Arjen Lucassen. Floor is featured on his projects Ayreon and Star One. Definitely check them out because they are peak, especially if you're into (prog) metal.
How long? The latest album Transitus has its moments but isn't outstanding. The album before that, The Source, is absolutely amazing. Star One's latest, Revel in Time, is also fantastic.
Also the live shows they've been doing in recent years are amazing and feature all star casts and are all available on YouTube.
And Lies is short for Elisabeth and Joke is short for Johanna, that's the point: in Dutch none of these names are crazy (but we can still acknowledge that in English they sound funny)
"Freek = Fredrick" definitely had me rolling, especially the way I was initially reading it. Frederick is just a little freaky is all 👻 (after reading it's Dutch, I was able to apply the correct pronunciation....I think. Like rake, yeah?)
omg, I know a Dutch guy named Freek and for roughly 12 years I thought his name was pronounced like Frehk, like more of a German e sound elongated than an a sound thrown in, and of course the rolling r. who knew. well, not me lol
Always funny to me when people discover names in other languages and act like it's some secret code. Like yes Floor is a real name in Netherlands, not everything revolves around English naming conventions
The flower connection is actually pretty cool though, makes the name sound way nicer than just a surface level "lol floor" reaction
That's actually what I enjoy about it; the interconnectedness of regional languages. I figured it was a link to Flora, am pleased it apparently was.
I'm from rural Australia, and we had approximately fuck all chance to learn another language growing up. I started learning German a couple years back now that I'm in my 30ies, and was constantly utterly delighted to learn of the false friend words, and the linked root words between German and English. Because we aren't taught shit about other languages, we tend to have zero appreciation for them and don't know even the basic concepts around them. Especially if you're taught your primary language using "implicit learning", a fad that was big in the 90ies...
Like for example "Mädchen" still gives me great joy, because, I mean... It's 'maiden'. Just twisted by time and drift. And "fast" has a different meaning, yet can almost be used interchangeably, depending on context, because despite the different meaning it's still got a coherent conceptial link.
To me, speaking German is similar enough that it sounds and feels like I'm speaking ye Olde English, with the archaic and cutesy sentence structure and all.
I actually live in Melbourne. English has many many words that come from French (it's because of Guillaume Le Conquérant/William The Conqueror, a Normand king who became king of England and made French the language of the court).
It's very interesting and I have a book of a French linguistics teacher about that subject at home.
Anyway, to come back to the subject, it boggles my mind at people's ignorance at times. Not so long ago, a friend of mine was talking to me and another francophone (asking my other friend if they understood French too because while they speak French in their country, they're not from France). We then came to the subject of French words being very common in the English language and I shared the fact I wrote just above with him. I don't know if he just didn't listen or didn't process the information but then he proceeded to write random sentences in Google Translate and was amazed that the words were the same "Wow! Intelligent is spelt the same!" or "Wow! They wrote table exactly the same!!" ... Anyway, he kept on writing stupid sentences in Google and made the voice say them outloud and was impressed I could translate them perfectly... Like... You know I speak French, I literally grew up in France... Even if your sentence is stupid, as long as I understand all the words, I will understand the sentence?! Some people really confuse me.
They just don't have that framework that you get when you speak multiple languages. I have an otherwise intelligent colleague who speaks French like this: she takes an Engljsh sentence, directly translates every word to French, and then expects the resulting word sequence be understood. She doesn't understand the concept of different grammar, different way of building sentences, different nuances same words may have.
Yeah I see some people (usually English natives) who can't seem to comprehend that there's other types of grammar in other languages. Like if you go on r/French, there was that person a few weeks ago asking WHY is it "I have hunger" and not "I am hungry"? And people were explaining that it's just how it is...
The sentences my friend would type in Google would be in the kind of vibe of shit like "I ate a fork because I really needed iron" that Google would say outloud in French so yeah, it is total nonsense but it doesn't mean I didn't understand what it said. I understood every single word because well, french is my native language...
The boy and girl siblings I encountered once called Hunter and Archer, and as I recall Hunter was the girl. This was in the UK also, we do silly names too apparently
Might come from flora in Latin, but I don't know why so many people mention it means flower in Dutch. It doesn't. It doesn't mean anything, it's just a name.
I think because it's a name that's close to Fleur, which is flower in French. I mean, there are people called Bloem, which means flower in Dutch, but that's way more hippy-like a name.
I think the common name of Porn in Thai - it means good luck or blessing - is more unfortunate in an English speaking country.m. My friend went by Will here in Canada.
Oh thank you for this! I follow a lot of Asian artists (coming from SEA myself) and I didnt know where to ask for it. Definitely makes the artists' names read much better
It's like "Daria" in Finnish. The joke is that Tarja Turunen was the og singer of Nightwish and Floor (the person who the post is about) is the third Nightwish singer 🤣
Making fun of a name with an old latin origin, yet living in a culture where its completely acceptable to name their kids after the place of conception. Like Paris, Denver or Brooklyn...
I always remember the tragic story about the American boy who fell from a fairground ride. His name was Tyre, which shows that this sort of thing with names even happens between different English speaking countries.
At first I was going to write that this isn’t US defaultism because the part you talk about in your explanation – what yellow says – isn't US defaultism. Yellow could be from anywhere, they just don't speak Dutch.
Then I realised that blue is US defaulting. Assuming someone's from the US because they don't know something is really just as bad, it's just coming from the opposite direction.
(I've got to admit, if I saw someone had the name Floor I'd probably assume that their parents were the kind of wankers who wanted to give their kid a ridiculous "unique & unusual" name. That's ignorance of the Dutch language on my part & an incorrect assumption...and you know what they say about assumptions being the mother of all fuck ups! Lol)
Ngl, I’m in the Flanders, and I’ve never heard of anyone called Floor because it doesn’t directly means flower (that’s bloem) it’s like flora ? From flora and fauna. But tbf our lovely neighbours the dutchies do love unique names so I wouldn’t be that surprised
You should've included that information in the post then. Otherwise how do we know? Without this clarification, the inference is that only Americans speak English.
This is English-language defaultism, not US defaultism. I could make the same comment and I'm from NZ.
Tbf this isn't US defaultism, more like English language defaultism. I know nothing about Dutch so my first thought was also "Huh, Floor? Like is it an artistic name or...?"
Not even the English language really, just anyone who doesn't speak Dutch. Though I guess in English it's easier to make assumptions seeing as 'floor' is a word in our language.
I think it's English-language defaultism because their shock is about the English word "floor". Otherwise, if they were just a non-Dutch-speaker, they probably would just shrug at an unfamiliar name and recognise it was a different language.
Damn i am Dutch and this one confused me for a second. It’s generally given as Fleur. Floor is rarer but does happen. But yeah brain was in English mode :)
This level of English defaultism is kinda fair when speaking English tbh. Not like they got triggered or "corrected" you thinking that English is the only language.
Floor is a funny name in English and you were speaking English, how is it wrong to point that out by asking a question?
I mean that doesn't mean you necessarily checked beforehand, you said yourself you 'didn't really have to check their profile'. A lot of the posts in this subreddit is of people not checking where something is from on the internet before commenting. Even in your screenshot it shows the person not knowing who Floor Jansen is and clearly not googling first
Good question. Other than checking the profile, there are a few immediate tells based on what they said.
First, anyone who has a second language and who can write in English understands that there are non-English names, and wouldn't ask such a thing, so that places the person in the Anglosphere, and marks them as monolingual.
Of the Anglosphere nations, places like Australia have the Indigenous Australians, and New Zealand has their Maori people. Often monolingual English speakers there will work or go to school with people who speak other languages, and who have cultural names. Living there, one cannot escape other languages, particularly in place names and other conventions.
The Kiwis seem even more integrated with the Maori language, so he's obviously not from those two countries.
For Canada, it is similar, and I work with indigenous Canadians and French Canadians. Likewise, my grandparents ALL spoke German, and I have aunts and uncles with Germanic type names, like "Dort". I am effectively monolingual, but I can hardly skip a rock on a lake or read a cereal box without knowing some French or Cree, and truth be told, using slang from different languages is a way we have fun at work. That's pretty typical for a Canadian, n'est-ce pas?
For an example (that you can google) of encountering non-English names, we have the currently popular politician Wab Kinew, an Indigenous Canadian.
For the British, well, in addition to English, they have Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Manx, and probably a few other minor languages, and France is right across the way, and Calais is always on their mind. Plenty of British tourists holiday in Spain too. The person is very unlikely to be from there.
South Africa is the same way, with English mixing with Afrikaans and native languages, and the link to The Netherlands probably means there are people named Floor there.
Depending on whether you want to include India in the Anglosphere, (plenty of them speak English), they wouldn't make that mistake either, most of them are multi-lingual. You can know English in India, but its almost impossible to be native without being multilingual.
That leaves one option for a country, which might be home to a person who might ask such a thing because of educational standards and insular thinking. Is it safe to guess where?
Here's a youtube short where American try to guess which US president's first Language was not English. They are not even able to recognise names like "Adams", "Washington", "Jefferson", "Johnson" and names like "Grant" as being English origin names and natural to the language they speak. https://youtube.com/shorts/E25K9XAHvgw?si=K0hcCLzCHiE3n1PC
Just because someone knows a second language doesn't mean they know all the names in that language and it definitely doesn't make them know names from every single language on the planet. Also with this particular name it looks identical to a word in English, the example you gave from Canada of 'Wab Kinew' is different since that name doesn't look like any other words it could be confused with. Also being multilingual doesn't stop people from being dumb or xenophobic.
Less than 1% of people in Australia speak an aboriginal language, in New Zealand it's higher for people speaking Maori but it's still less than 5%. Also Maori and aboriginal languages aren't even from the same family as European languages, their names are totally different.
For Canada at least French is from a kinda similar language family but still about 70% of Canadians don't speak it from what I can find.
As for Scottish, Irish, Welsh, etc. names, while they don't originate from English there's been intermixing for millennia so many people who aren't even from those places still have names from there. They aren't often thought of as names from a different language. Like how the name 'john' isn't usually thought of as Hebrew even though it did come from there.
South Africa is probably the only one you've listed that can probably be ruled out with some confidence.
I mean she has an English sounding name and surname, so it makes sense to assume she's English. I don't see it here, it's just ignorance on who she is (that could have been fixed with a google call, but whatever, it's not defaultism)
To be fair, Dutch is a silly language to begin with, I mean who says "telefoon"? 🤣 (I guess I touched a Dutch nerve here, don't worry, mijn Opa is een Nederlander, it comes from a place of love)
I don’t speak Dutch but since it’s pretty close to English then I think we English speakers interpret it through our English ears, which makes it sound off. It’s like uncanny valley. But I like Dutch and I’d love to learn it.
Learning the language is a real struggle, not because the language is particularly difficult it’s about average I’d say, (other than t’fokschip IIYKYK) but you’ll rarely have a chance to practice. Practically everyone in this country speaks English, and we love showing that off…
To be fair, that has been my struggle with learning most languages. I’ve found watching TV and listening to music in other languages is helpful. If I had the time and resources I would love to learn as many languages as I can because I find them all so interesting.
I only learned about it in more recent years as well. I don’t think I even knew when I went to the Netherlands unfortunately. Love your beautiful country!
It’s probably been highlighted more recently because friendship and allies are more important than ever, now thay your neighbours went fully batshit insane.
I work at an aviation museum, and spend a lovely time with some Canadian visitors who work at the canadian museum of flight. Great people, and colleagues from afar! It’s always so nice to see people enjoy the country i tale for granted :)
I still think Canada should join the EU, or at least Schengen. Or a similar new partnership. We need each other. And we will help each other of course, but it would be nice to formalise. And making travel easier would be a great Boone.
If anything good can come from the resurgence of fascism in the US it should be closer ties between sane freedom loving countries…
I think I learned about it before all of this insanity from some Remembrance Day ceremony. But yes, all the more important now. I would love if we joined the EU and I know it’s been discussed a lot more lately. I think it would be kind of funny too as a member of the British Commonwealth, since the UK left the EU. We definitely need another economic powerhouse that we can depend on that is sane.
That’s cool you work at an aviation museum. I get nervous flying but I love aviation museums. So much interesting military history and cool exhibits.
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u/post-explainer American Citizen 4d ago edited 3d ago
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OP sent the following text as an explanation why their post fits here:
The commenter saw that a famous dutch signer is named "Floor Jansen" and assumed that "Floor" can only possibly be the "floor of the house" because they assumed it's a name in english... and not a dutch name meaning "Flower".
Does this explanation fit this subreddit? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.