According to my website statistics, many people get here by searching for “ayeri” on Google. Nothing bad as such, but as it seems, it’s also a regular name in the Arab world. Among others also that of a former al-Qaeda leader … Apart from the fact that the Turkic language spoken in Azerbaijan is called Azeri (And what do I find in the place of Z on my German keyboard? Right, Y!). Once again a reason to state that any similarity with actually existing places, people, languages etc. is entirely coincidental! In fact, back in the day, I just made up the language’s name for its sound.
Should I now change the wording on the welcome page to something more specific than “all things Ayeri,” as only my constructed language and potentially its equally fictitious speakers are involved on this website? I’m reluctant to change the name of the entire language after so many years to avoid confusion, since it’s gained some reputation over the years. Especially since so far, I haven’t received any requests from anyone to do so.
Disambiguation pages, like the ones you find on wikipedia are a good thing. Name changes are not a good thing unless you’ve got some real pain going on, like trademark battles, or if a disambiguation page doesn’t stop the confusion. toki pona has a lot of words that also happen to be the names of various companies and organizations from around the world. I can’t think of an instance where the confusion caused and problems.
Since you actually did a proper reference grammar, the more likely confusion is that speed reading academics might miss that this is a fictional language.
Ha! That’s funny. A similar thing happened to me: I accidentally named a language of mine (unwittingly) after an already-existing natlang. In that case, I ended up changing the language (Kele > Kelenala). In your case, though, I’d just change the blog/page title. So you have “The Ayeri Resource”: Change it to “The Ayeri Language Resource”, etc. If it’s clear that it’s a language (not a person), I don’t see any problem with the crossover. I mean, it’s unfortunate, given the guy whose name was al-Ayeri, but since it’s not the same as, say, the name of another language (as was the case with mine), I don’t see it being a problem large enough to warrant a name change.
I completely agree and think that a name change should not be considered at this point. I had similar issues with “Qatama”, as it is also a type of Arabian horse, and any Google search for “Kala Language” results is an actual language called Kala Lagaw Ya, so don’t be rash or take it too hard.
-sano
So…speaking of Ayeri not being Ayeri… I just happened to be looking at the analytics for my site, and came across a rather…interesting entry. Someone apparently typed the following into Google and came to my site: take a look.
Rule 34 😉