The Person Hanging the Sign is Wrong, Too

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

I recommend the "keychain rule," instead. (Image via Pixabay.)
Thought experiment: When someone writes Kick Me! on a sheet of paper, and then tapes it to the seat of someone else's pants, who deserves the blame when a third party follows through on the instructions? (a) Only the person who followed the instructions, or (b) that person and the one who posted the sign? If the wrong answer eludes you, consider what you might think about that in an ideal world, when nobody does the kicking. Or, perhaps, just consider the action alone.

That scenario is what immediately popped into my mind when I got wind of an apology issued by a major airline after one of its ticketing agents couldn't resist the urge to belittle the name of a child whose parent should have considered the ramifications of the non-ethnic, non-literary, non-phonetic, and obviously made-up name she chose for her child. The airline in question immediately (and properly) issued an apology: As the child's mother correctly noted, the child was within earshot of the remarks.

That said, I think it is wrong to give the mother a pass. She did her child a disservice by, at best, not giving enough thought to what that kind of name would mean for her child: A lifetime of having to (a) tell people how to pronounce it when they see it in print, (b) tell people how to spell it when they hear it, (c) say things like Yes. This really is my name., and (d) yes, fend off ridicule. As do many people with attention-drawing names (myself included during childhood, but unintentionally and for different reasons), the child may indeed end up loving the name. But why do something like this on purpose? Childhood can be challenging enough without a series of unwanted, undeserved, and unchosen confrontations built into the fact that one has to have a name.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Fixed a run-on sentence. 

8 comments:

Snedcat said...

Yo, Gus, so many comments...I'll just link right here to a funny and charming little bit of humor and satire (not by me but by one of my co-conspirators) inspired by the thought of hippie linguists (so basically a bit of fun with Chomskyan theory as of the late 60s in addition to the temper of the times).

Second, pity these poor folks--or admire their fortitude in bearing up under such burdens. It's like a peculiarly ecumenical bout of Simpsons clip.

On a serious note, one interesting survival of African naming practices in the United States is modern forms of West African day names. As with many parts of the world that over the millennia had contact (direct or indirect) with Babylonia, that region (by very indirect means, most likely) also has a seven-day week. (Traditional China had a ten-day equivalent to the week that survived the introduction of Buddhism, which has a seven-day week, but not the impact of the West in the 19th century.) There are seven name days for boys born on each of the days of the week and seven others for girls, all of which are common throughout West Africa, though they show individual developments in the different languages. Most of the names are attested in early records from the Caribbean and the American South, and several (which resemble European names) have survived to the present day in the forms closest to European names: Cuba/Kobe (Tuesday) and Cuffy/Coffy (Friday, as in Kofi Annan) among men and Phoebe (from forms like Afiba, Friday) among women. (Kwasi for boys born on Sunday and Cujo for boys born on Monday are also fairly familiar, I think.) It's worth remembering that giving such traditional names, and later individualized names, was one way that slaves asserted their individuality and what they remembered of their history and customs in a system that did its hardest to reduce them to robotic chattel.

IKE said...

Great post. It reminds me of the Thomas Jefferson quote:

“In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current.”

In this case, absent of family/ethnic meaning to a name (principle), the rational choice is to follow recent trends (fashion).

Gus Van Horn said...

Snedcat,

Thanks for the humorous and interesting comment. How that name tournament (linked at folks) ever escaped me is a mystery, but it's a gem.

Jacob,

Up to a point, the trends can be okay. But the beauty of our "keychain rule" (linked in the caption) is that it avoids a pitfall my wife and I both experienced: We were both usually one of several in our grade school classes bearing our given names. (My first and last name together also matched someone famous, which got old really fast.)

Gus

Snedcat said...

Oof, some of the text of my comment got devoured somehow, probably by my computer, which is a persnickety beastie. Here's the full text, including another entertaining link that disappeared like many of the names in question (thank goodness):

Second, pity these poor folks--or admire their fortitude in bearing up under such burdens. It's like a peculiarly ecumenical bout of Puritan naming!

And here's a fitting Simpsons clip.


I should add that coming from a long line of backwoods Texans (or what would be backwoods if there were actually any trees there, but there aren't), our family has more than its share of colorful odd names: One grandfather was Trabue Boots, and another relative is Milas Kelly.

Gus Van Horn said...

Thanks for making sure we got the link to Puritan naming here.

Anonymous said...

Well, this couldn't be complete without the Bolsheviks weighing in.

http://www.namenerds.com/uucn/listofweek/soviet.html

http://www.nancy.cc/2011/11/10/russian-baby-names-after-the-revolution/

Imagine a kid named Tractor or Textile or Sickle.

Even a kid named Hammer. You know what he's gonna do in college!

c andrew

Gus Van Horn said...

C.,

I see that Ayn Rand wasn't pushing the envelope with Octiabrina, the baby name Comrade Sonia came up with in We the Living. It's on the first list as Oktiabrina: Atrocious, but not so atrocious as Hammer, and thus believable to someone unfamiliar with the effects of drinking the revolutionary Kool Aide.

Gus

Snedcat said...

Well, this couldn't be complete without the Bolsheviks weighing in.

My long-ago Russian fiancee used to make fun of those names, then would top it off by saying, "That's right up there with giving Christian babies names like 'Resurrection.'" One of the reasons I was able eventually to be her fiance for a while is that I laughed because I knew that's what her name, Anastasiya, means in Greek. In any case, she actually considered the name Vladlen slightly less horrific than the others; it sounded enough like a real Russian name not to rub her completely the wrong way.

Those names are not entirely unknown in Soviet Central and Inner Asia either; I have met more than one non-Russian woman named Oktyabr. Then again I also had a Kazakh friend named Margarita; she said she didn't actually know for sure because her Russian godmother died before she asked her, but she is pretty sure she was named for Master and Margarita. (I love the Greater Soviet Encyclopedia's judgment on Bulgakov for this book: "A slanderer of Soviet reality." Well, only when truth is not an absolute defense at law, I guess...)