The following amusing article is so àpropos to the topic of society, culture and mass insanity. It's also just plain funny.
10 illegal baby namesPersonally I'm stunned that the Swedish name Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 (pronounced 'Albin') would be banned. I think we should name more kids such things to screw telemarketers up. I can envision hilarious scenarios in the future:
"Is there a Mr. or Mrs... um... erh... Oops, nevermind!" {Phone hangs up suddenly.}Truth be told, despite all the well-intentioned legislation, there exist quite a share of Nancy Gaylords and Hung Dongs in the world. As far as I know, lawyers haven't objected to their parents' flagrant brutality. The entire character list of the Matrix trilogy must really dismay a lot of lawmakers, come to think of it - Mouse, Trinity, Merovingian, Morpheus, etc.
It's also fascinating how certain arbitrarily selected baby names touch such a raw nerve for lawmakers and yet eliminating child poverty is relatively low on society's list of things to do. Oh well. I guess it's true what they say: A dead malnourished baby is better than a healthy teased baby. And I leave you all to ruminate on that sad note.
Ha ha. You think any of this is really for the baby's sake? This is to keep numbers up on "our Kind Of People". That's what this kind of nonsense is about. If we let Breton parents register their children with Breton names, it is an insult to Napoleon himself!
ReplyDeleteHa ha. You think any of this is really for the baby's sake?
ReplyDeleteOf course not! It's the parents trying to make a statement. In regards to names such as Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116, the statement is "LOKE @ WUT I CAN DO LOLOLOL", or a variant thereof.
Unusual names aren't necessarily a problem, however. For example, a couple I know named their daughter Rossignol, the old Occitan for nightingale. This works because it can be shortened to Rosie or even Ross.
This is to keep numbers up on "our Kind Of People".
Please clarify what you mean by this.
If we let Breton parents register their children with Breton names, it is an insult to Napoleon himself!
I sincerely hope you're saying this in jest or ironically. Such xenophobic, Celtophobic Francomania could only be spoken in serious by unhinged fanatics.
"I sincerely hope you're saying this in jest or ironically. '
ReplyDeleteI intended it ironically as an insult to Celtophobic Francomaniacs.
"Please clarify what you mean by this."
It's a form of forced assimilation.
In reference to your Rossignol example, Chinese parents in the US reportedly often try to find English-sounding that will sound fairly similar to the Chinese names they really wnat to givwe their kids, so the kids will have "real" names along with the English names foreigners can pronounce.
I decided to delete Mordrigar's well-meaning tip about some hokey, politically motivated studies because I wished to avoid pseudoscience on my blog. Despite my strategy, we've still gone down this path. So let's roll with it.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I think that anyone who honestly believes that the selection of baby name is paramount to a child's path in life is a complete headcase. A transparently dumb idea doesn't need debating and I take Jim's comment to be ironic, not literal, exposing the inherent political nature of legalizing or illegalizing baby names. To me, the psychology of such naive people who believe these things is more relevant than their claims.
For example, some people under the auspices of academic institutions publish "research" on silly things like the supposed relationships of baby names to criminal life: cf. David E. Kalist and Daniel Y. Lee, First names and crime: Does unpopularity spell trouble? Here's a telling excerpt: "For example, Aura and
Hess (2004) report that first name characteristics are predictors of an individual’s income and
educational attainment, noting that popular names were positively correlated with these attributes
but black-sounding names, which by definition are names infrequently given to whites and have
a low popularity index, were negatively correlated."
An intelligent reader will be asking the obvious: How exactly does a name *sound* "black"? And how "un-white" is a "white" person before he's no longer labeled "white"? And more generally, what is a "common name" as opposed to an "uncommon" one, especially in a multicultural society? The answer is simple: BULLSHIT!
The article is just smothered with meaningless racist and political jingle that can't be given a second thought. What's more relevant though is why, for example, does the New York Times pawn this anti-intellectual drivel off as "news"? To what extent does media relentlessly capitalize on our psychological weakness to be more stirred by mountains of non-truth than direct truth?