Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 January 12

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January 12

Adoption

As a UK national, is it possible to adopt a foreign national (in this case Chinese) who is over the age of 18? Also, if I was abroad at the time (in this case Vietnam), how would I sort this process out? Would I need to speak to the Home Office about this? Considering we will both be in a different country from our birth, we would probably have to speak to our own embassies? KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:51, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

As a UK national, it's not possible to adopt _anyone_ over 18. See this official guideline. You can, of course, make them your residuary legatee, but they can only be officially your son or daughter if they're still a minor. Tevildo (talk) 01:54, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

It's generally going to be difficult no matter what because it's an obvious way to circumvent immigration laws and governments tend to frown on that kind of thing. SteveBaker (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

economics

properties of land — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.202.5.250 (talk) 07:35, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Property of homework: We don't do it for you. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:55, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia; see our article on Land (economics).--Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:01, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Foot running races

I am interested in discovering the derivation of the word “Gift” when attached to a footrace etc i.e. The Stawell GIFT

I am presuming that it may be as simple as in days gone by that when some one won a race they were given a “Gift”.

Is it as simple as this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.180.115.118 (talk) 23:13, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

[tidied up a bit for readability]   —Their "History" page [1] doesn't specify, but hints at such: "...the winner of footraces received a small nugget of gold."  (Another possibility is that somebody "gifted" an endowment for the race; prizes, etc. — but surely that would have been mentioned.) ~E:71.20.250.51 (talk) 23:33, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Sport in Australia used to have a massive class divide between professionals, who got paid for playing/competing/winning, and amateurs, who didn't seek the money. In the latter case I'm sure it was meant to also carry an image of "didn't NEED the (dirty) money". Once an amateur had been paid anything anywhere for participating in sport, their image was sullied, and they were then, forever, one of those "lesser" professionals. Perhaps the idea of a "gift" was meant to be a work-around for the idea of being paid. Although in the case of pro-running it didn't seem to work. All through my youth, amateurs did not compete in the Stawell Gift. HiLo48 (talk) 01:05, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

There's nothing at Stawell Gift about it. I've heard of horse races etc called something "Gift", and I googled a bit to find out the origin of this term in the sporting world, but zilch. Nothing at wiktionary:gift about it. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:58, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

In Victorian Athletic League we have "In Australia professional foot-racing is said to have begun in the gold-mining days. The miners raced against each other, often in a one-to-one match-race situation on a handicap basis for the gift of a gold nugget offered by the local publican or mine owner." It's not cited, but sounded good. Further searching led me to this, from where, unfortunately, the whole of that section of the article appears to have been directly copied. So I think I've found the answer to the OP's question, the source, and a big copyright violation! Looks like some work is needed. HiLo48 (talk) 02:15, 13 January 2014 (UTC)