With Respect to Naming
This morning I had a friendly disagreement with a guy whom we shall call 'Jake' for now. Jake's thing was that people shouldn't make fun of other people's names; the cue for his discontent was my statement that someone else's name sounded as if it had come from the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Jake said that to make fun of a name was disrespectful to a person and the parents who presumably bestowed that name.
I suppose I am inured to that particular perspective. I've grown up with a name that has too many syllables, too many alternative spellings, and too many rhymes — not all of them pretty. But when people make fun of my name(s), as so many have, and as so many will, I don't think of it as disrespect towards me or my ancestors.
I mean, supposing I had a son and I named him 'Defender of Men, He Who is Like Unto the God of War, Showing Piety and Undeserved Favour to Others', wouldn't you find it somewhat unusual? Or if I named my daughter 'Pure Parsley'? (Etymological note here: do not confuse 'Selina' with 'Selene'.) And people who name their daughters 'Linda' (= 'serpent') are fairly easy to find.
The point is that the names we adopt are just tags. Some tags have odd origins, some sound peculiar. People with nice names have better lives, people with odd names may stand out in a positive or negative way. But a lot of it depends on context, and sometimes, as with so many things, we feel for the person with the odd name, forgetting that this person has lived with it for decades and has come to terms with it — those who haven't normally get it changed as soon as they can.
That leads me to the case of a former classmate of mine. She had a name which sounded lovely in Mandarin but was transliterated into English with truly unfortunate consequences. Her name even went around the Internet as a sort of urban legend of naming awfulness. Yet, she's learnt to live with it, and has gone on record as saying she won't change it. If I had her name, I would be doing the deed poll thing faster than a speeding bullet; because she won't change it, I have enormous extra respect for that already respectable classmate.
I suppose I am inured to that particular perspective. I've grown up with a name that has too many syllables, too many alternative spellings, and too many rhymes — not all of them pretty. But when people make fun of my name(s), as so many have, and as so many will, I don't think of it as disrespect towards me or my ancestors.
I mean, supposing I had a son and I named him 'Defender of Men, He Who is Like Unto the God of War, Showing Piety and Undeserved Favour to Others', wouldn't you find it somewhat unusual? Or if I named my daughter 'Pure Parsley'? (Etymological note here: do not confuse 'Selina' with 'Selene'.) And people who name their daughters 'Linda' (= 'serpent') are fairly easy to find.
The point is that the names we adopt are just tags. Some tags have odd origins, some sound peculiar. People with nice names have better lives, people with odd names may stand out in a positive or negative way. But a lot of it depends on context, and sometimes, as with so many things, we feel for the person with the odd name, forgetting that this person has lived with it for decades and has come to terms with it — those who haven't normally get it changed as soon as they can.
That leads me to the case of a former classmate of mine. She had a name which sounded lovely in Mandarin but was transliterated into English with truly unfortunate consequences. Her name even went around the Internet as a sort of urban legend of naming awfulness. Yet, she's learnt to live with it, and has gone on record as saying she won't change it. If I had her name, I would be doing the deed poll thing faster than a speeding bullet; because she won't change it, I have enormous extra respect for that already respectable classmate.
etched with acid at 9:19:00 am
6 Comments:
Probably the parents mean Linda (='beautiful')?
Also, some people may learn to live with it, but not everyone can.
But I agree that names are just labels, like any other word is.
Though for other words, we collectively decide on the semantics; for names, you alone must.
I forgot something that supplements the thought quite nicely:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/31/1027926917671.html
Well.
There is still one name you cannot beat:
Batman bin Suparman.
...
So. Yeah.
/Sorrows
xylph: 'Linda' never meant 'beautiful'; you need to check up on spurious etymology meant to make people feel better about their names! Like 'Rosalind' from Germanic 'hros-' = horse and '-lind' = serpent, meaning roughly 'as graceful as a horse and as wise as a serpent'; later retconned to mean something like 'beautiful rose'.
Sorrows: Yeah, that's an old one. But it doesn't say anything meaningful, if you think about it.
Would your classmate be the NIE professor Chew SF?
@boonleong: yes, and I will always remember that her name was Xuefen to me. :)
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