[Zope3-dev] Re: RFC: Rename "principal" to "participant"

[Derrick Hudson]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 12:08:40PM +0200, Sebastien Douche wrote:
| On 9/13/05, Philipp von Weitershausen <philipp at weitershausen.de> wrote:

| > I wonder, for
| > example, which term French speakers use when they *talk* to each other
| > about principals... French is known to be very conservative when it
| > comes to introducing English words to itself
| 
| Principal is used in law, finance, education, art, social economics...
| All french translations aren't good for zope3. Using 'Principal' is
| another option but it is also a french word ('main', 'the main thing')
| : source of confusion.

Interesting.  I suppose English obtained "principal" from French ca
1040 ad.  Maybe the French are conservative about adopting English
words because the English were, generally, uneducated peasants while
the French were the ruling class.  (then again, that probably has no
relevance :-))

English has several definitions, with "main" or "primary"
being one of them.  I suppose that is where the others are derived
from.  For example, the highest-level official in a primary or
secondary school is called the principal.

Maybe the use of "principal" for security stems from the idea of a
primary identity, which can be related to secondary identities (ie a
user vs. the groups the user is a member of).

-D

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