What kind of name is Maïckã Lhã Bēnjé?

Google says it’s Romanian but won’t translate. So I don’t know.

Lha, makes me think it is African. I don’t know.

So few matches, I’m wondering if it is invented, or if the accents and/or spelling are inaccurate or unique.

The Facebook page that comes up when you Google the name has two Guinean music pages liked, so I’ll go with West African, if it is a real foreign name. It’s definitely not Turkish, though. Turkic languages are far more straightforward in their transcriptions than that.

—A Facebook page I see is for a Filipino in Davao City named Pâtîsøÿ Bênjîê Mâkâbâlî Ùv

—Then I Google again and I find a widowed person “Maïckã Lhã Bēnjé” in Campbell, California.

—Googling Lhã Bēnjé gets me a Filipino named Benj Lhar.

—When I look for Mâkâbâlî I find a woman with friends in the Philippines and India.

—Looking at names with similar diacritical marks I find a Filipina named Neñgšaïey Freétÿ Ÿàmäg Ùv.

Something odd is the rarity of those names. When I google “Neñgšaïey”, “Freétÿ”, and ”Ÿàmäg” separately, everything points to that same person.

Also, there are no diacritics when I Google images of Tagalog newspapers and look at a Filipino language web site

I just messaged my Filipino DIL. Will let me know what she answers.

Sounds Indian to me.

But, who knows?

Can the OP provide the context in which the name appeared?

@Call_Me_Jay Yeah, Tagalog doesn’t use such diacritics. Those must be “metal umlauts” a.k.a. röck döts, that is, diacritics used as decoration. Which is likely the case with this example.

Not Filipino according to my DIL.

You might consider the possibility that the name is multiethnic, like “Keiko O’Brien” or “Harry Kim.”

A colleague received a friend request from someone who supposedly has this name full of diacritical marks. (She doesn’t know the person, so she’s not responding to the request.) She asked me if I recognized the language group. I didn’t, but only yesterday I spent some time looking at the article written in Turkish by President Erdogan—an op-ed piece published in the Washington Post. Here’s one paragraph of it:

Türkiye, yaşanan olayı tüm yönleriyle aydınlatmak için geçtiğimiz bir aylık süre zarfında elindeki tüm imkânları seferber etti. Bu gayretlerimiz neticesinde tüm dünya Kaşıkçı’nın soğukkanlı biçimde bir suikast timi tarafından öldürüldüğünü öğrendi. Cinayetin önceden planlandığı kesin olarak ortaya çıktı.

(An English translation was offered, but I was interested in looking at the Turkish.)

I thought I saw some structural similarities between this and the name of the requester. So I wondered if anyone on Fluther might actually know enough to identify the language in question. I can recognize some languages without being able to speak or read them, but this isn’t one of them.

Well you have to look at the different type of diacritics being used. Turkish has the cedilla, the dieresis (umlaut), and breve (only over <g>). But in this name you’re seeing a dieresis, tildes (which indicate nasality, as in Portuguese), a macron, and an acute accent. Can’t really think of any language that uses those four.

Ok. Well, I’m certainly not trying to prove it’s Turkish. It’s evidently not. I was answering @MrGrimm888‘s request for the context of the question. I don’t even know if it’s a real name. And of course if it’s a transliteration there might be more than one way of rendering the original in the Roman alphabet.

If you know a lot of languages, @Demosthenes, and we can therefore eliminate them all, that ought to help narrow it down.

Right, and I’m just trying to narrow it down based on what languages I know and what diacritics they use. I studied linguistics and am familiar with a good number of languages and transliterations of those languages. I don’t know any that use the diacritics here. It’s an unusual combination: a language that uses c, k, an i-dieresis, macrons, nasal markers, and <lh>. I know languages that tick off some of those, but not all. So I’m stumped.

Perhaps it’s a mixed person then. With a name derived from two or more cultural backgrounds…

My suspicion is its a made-up name if it came from social media.

I am leaning towards fake name. As I wrote, googling “Neñgšaïey”, “Freétÿ”, and ”Ÿàmäg” separately, everything points to that same person.

I hunt for people a lot and that never ever ever happens. Not seldom. Never happens.

For comparison, as far as I have found, I am the first person in history with my First Name / Last Name. But I get a 100,000 google hits on my oddball last name and 1,000,000 on my first name.

I wonder if we’re looking at a bot that makes fake Facebook profiles, or a click farm where actual people do the work.