Moments of Permanence - We should be clear on certain things: Names, identity, and why certain people need to shut up hard

From: sqbr Date: June 15th, 2009 11:38 am (UTC) (Link)

Totally agreed. I have a half brewed post mulling about the right of people to define themselves. Look at the "They're not really a man/woman" stuff that gets thrown at trans people.

Tangent: there is apparently an unrelated italian surname which is spelled the same as my (totally british) maiden name but the final "e" is pronounced as "ee". Since members of my family tend to (a)Confuse people's ethnicity-dar and (b)Live in areas with a large italian population, people have trouble believing they're not italian :) (I'm about the only member of my family who this doesn't happen to)

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From: sami Date: June 15th, 2009 03:42 pm (UTC) (Link)

... because you look the least Italian, or...?

You and your ethnically tricksy kind. Don't think I haven't forgotten your husband is a stealth Indian, now you bring this kind of thing up...

(I'd feel worse about making assumptions about his ethnicity than I do, except for the part where SERIOUSLY. First AND last names! Fair skin! Ginger hair! SOMEONE COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE MORE "I AM OF SCOTTISH DESCENT" CUES.)

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From: sqbr Date: June 16th, 2009 12:52 am (UTC) (Link)

*Nods* I think I've told you this story, but when I was a big white ball of a baby apparently someone looked at my parents and me and said "So..he's not the father?". Mum was Not Impressed.

But when we were in Malaysia the guy cooking breakfast asked where I was from, and then said something like "But you're not just from Australia, you don't look like a typical Australian". Cam gets no such questions :) (And I was struck by the fact that I'd never notice such subtle distinctions between Malaysians, if I'm lucky I can pick if someone's Chinese Malaysian or not. White privilege ahoy!)

Which I guess goes to show that ethnicity is harder to pick than people think. Have you seen the which of these people is Aboriginal? ads?

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From: susanreads Date: June 15th, 2009 12:06 pm (UTC) He said what?! (Link)

Bleedin' 'eck.

Sotomayor is obviously a Spanish name. Doesn't everybody know where the stress goes in Spanish? Does he pronounce it to rhyme with mayor, however that's pronounced in USA?

Also, who are you calling newcomers, you feckin' descendant of only-200-years-ago immigrants? ... hang on ... Krikorian looks like an Armenian name; I think that means the Spanish have been there longer than he has.

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From: sami Date: June 15th, 2009 02:40 pm (UTC) Re: He said what?! (Link)

I couldn't tell you with confidence where stress goes in Spanish names, actually. In my experience, at least, Australia doesn't have much of a Spanish-background population. (But America does, so dude has no excuse.) However, since it's her damn name, I'd default to pronouncing it the way she does, and oh look, problem solved.

Also, re: the newcomer thing: Yes. With elements of "so, you'll be converting your name to a pronunciation compatible with the local Native language, right?"

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From: elspethdixon Date: June 15th, 2009 12:49 pm (UTC) (Link)

one of the areas where conformity is appropriate is how your new countrymen say your name, since that's not something the rest of us can just ignore, unlike what church you go to or what you eat for lunch

I love the implication that people's religion and food choices are some kind of terrible imposition on the rest of us that we're all long-sufferingly 'ignoring.' But oh, when someone's name is hard to pronounce, that's going too far!

The painful thing is, this isn't a unique form of stupidity. A congresswoman from Texas caused a minor scandal a while ago by suggesting that Asian immigrants adopt 'legal' names that are Anglicanized and not too Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese-sounding so that people wouldn't find their names confusing when they went to vote/renew their drivers license/etc.

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From: sami Date: June 15th, 2009 02:37 pm (UTC) (Link)

*twitch*

I admit to having occasionally been frustrated by a couple of Asian names, but that was just when I worked at Directory Assistance and encountered the horrors of 1) long streets and 2) immigrant congregation. There's one street - I think it's in Sydney - that has, literally, hundreds of people named Nguyen living on it.

Which leads to conversations like this:

Customer: Nguyen.
Me: At what address please?
Them: [Street, suburb]
Me: ... There are... too many listings, at that street address... Do you have their initials?
Them: [Initials]
Me: ...
Me: I have about thirty with that initial on that street. Do you have the house number?

EXCEPT SOME OF THEM APPEAR TO LIVE AT A BLOCK OF FLATS, BECAUSE THERE ARE TEN AT THE SAME STREET NUMBER. Around then the customer gave up.

This is the only problem I can see, and since there are no guarantees those people aren't all related (maybe all the aunts and uncles and cousins and so on all moved to the same street on purpose) they might all take the same name anyway.

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From: elspethdixon Date: June 15th, 2009 03:44 pm (UTC) (Link)

I have a similar problem at my office, with multiple instances of the same name. There's a Joe Smith* Jr and a Joe Smith III.

Person on phone: I'd like to speak to Joe.
Me: Which Joe.
Them: Joe Smith.
Me: There are two Joe Smiths. Do you want the older one or the younger one?
Them: Joe Smith, Jr.
Me: Transfers them to Joe Smith Jr.
*two minutes later*
Them: *calls back* That wasn't the Joe I wanted. I wanted the younger one.
Me: The younger one is Joe Smith III *transfers*

It's like "Who's on First" via telephone.


*not actually his name

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From: sqbr Date: June 16th, 2009 01:04 am (UTC) (Link)

We had the same problem with people's details getting mixed up. I don't know if you encountered this, but it is traditional for ALL Vietnamese girls to have the first name "Thi". I'm assuming the Vietnamese bureaucracy has some way of dealing with this, but all we had was a bunch of dodgy hacks.

But it's like the fact that putting in disabled access is a genuine inconvenience: the question is, do you start from the assumption that it's your organisation's job to accommodate and cater to the huge variety of people who make up the population, or do you start from the assumption that everyone is "normal" and then treat anyone who differs from that as an inconvenient exception? (I have this rant about the unstated and restrictive assumptions associated with records, but it's a particular combination of controversial-with-my-nominal-employer and niche interest that makes me cautious about posting it :))

Personally, if I got to change the names of one group who made my job more difficult, it would be twins with similar names :D And then the Smiths. (Disclaimer: obviously I wouldn't actually do this, see topic of post)

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From: lady_ganesh Date: June 16th, 2009 01:35 am (UTC) (Link)

I love the implication that people's religion and food choices are some kind of terrible imposition on the rest of us that we're all long-sufferingly 'ignoring.' But oh, when someone's name is hard to pronounce, that's going too far!

NAIL. ON. HEAD.

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From: willow Date: June 15th, 2009 01:18 pm (UTC) (Link)

I did an entry on this in my other journal and called it 'Name Power'. Because to me it really did feel like something out of fantasy tropes, where a name is who you are, and the more people mispronounce it, the more they're trying to mold who you are into how they see you.

And also by denying you your true name, they're denying you power. Which explains why they get so agitated when someone insists on correcting them / boldly stating their personhood via how their name is said or pronounced and/or being unashamed to have an 'ethnic' name.

That was another side of it, names as passwords to access in society. Have the wrong name, or pronounce it the 'wrong way' and doors close.

Took me an hour to find this - I didn't have it bookmarked: Comedy Sketch On Names (South Asian/East Indian)

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From: sami Date: June 15th, 2009 02:31 pm (UTC) (Link)

I like that clip. Nice inversion.

And yes. I remember one evening a friend of mine took a group of us (her high school friends) to a Ba'hai gathering, and we were introduced to a large number of Iranian people. I couldn't tell you any of their names now (it was well over ten years ago), but at the time, with each introduction, I went through my usual practice when meeting people with non-Anglo names: listen carefully, repeat it back as faithfully as I can, accept corrections, try to get it right.

What really sticks in my memory is the way those people all loved me for it. They all decided I was wonderful and reacted with delight and a lot more praise than I deserved, just for trying to get their names correct.

Except that I understand why they thought I was remarkable, because way, way too few people do that at all. It's so *rude*.

I meant to mention another form of name-overpowering I encountered a few months ago, from an older guy at church. The first time we met, I introduced myself as Sami. The second time he met me, he called me Samantha. (Which meant he took several tries to get my attention, because I didn't realise he thought he was calling my name at all.)

It took some discussion to establish that no, really, it's Sami, not Samantha. (Which I've encountered before, and which also annoys me: my original first name, which I do not use any more if I can help it, was Rae. Three letters. On a large number of occasions, I've had to bring out ID to prove that it isn't short for Raelene or Rachel or any other name, it's JUST THAT.)

Meanwhile, a friend of mine, whose name is Jennifer, and who goes by Jen, is periodically aggravated by people who insist on calling her Jenny, even after she's expressed a preference that they not do so. It happens after she introduces herself as Jen or as Jennifer, and that's also a great wrongness to me. You also don't get to decide what *form* of someone's name you'll use. (Other victims of this I know: My friend Elizabeth, who prefers that to Liz, and Chas, whose name is NOT Charlie. In relatively formal situations, he uses Charles. Charlie is NOT HIS NAME.)

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From: willow Date: June 15th, 2009 02:44 pm (UTC) (Link)

A very short list of people get to call me Wils. I decide who's on that list. You (general plural you) don't get to decide you want on that list and you will call me by that name. People who do that, I tell them point blank, whether or not it will embarrass them that they don't have permission to call me that, and they know it!

And only one person in the world gets to call me a derivative nickname from Willow.

I've realized some people think, since Willow is not my birthname, that it doesn't matter what form they use or how they say it, because it's not my 'real' name so why would I care how they mangled it or not.

And that always makes me want to smack people, because for me, the name a person chooses to go by - the name they self identify with is far more important than a name their parents decided on due to family tradition or just because they thought it was cool.

There's a difference to me, between a name put to you as an infant and a name you choose for yourself as a sentient, sapient being with free will and choice.

The only people who call me by my birthname are medical professionals reading off official documentation. Even my mother calls me by a nickname. One my siblings decided on, as easier to say, when they were babies.

A person's name can change during their lifetime from how they pronounce it, to what nicknames they attach to it, or tolerate etc.

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From: sami Date: June 15th, 2009 03:22 pm (UTC) (Link)

I've realized some people think, since Willow is not my birthname, that it doesn't matter what form they use or how they say it, because it's not my 'real' name so why would I care how they mangled it or not.

And that always makes me want to smack people, because for me, the name a person chooses to go by - the name they self identify with is far more important than a name their parents decided on due to family tradition or just because they thought it was cool.

There's a difference to me, between a name put to you as an infant and a name you choose for yourself as a sentient, sapient being with free will and choice.

YES THIS.

Sami is not the name I was born with. The name I was born with makes me actively unhappy. I am, in fact, going to change it legally - at some point when, not least, I no longer have a pending court case, because that just seems like it could get messy.

Some people seem to dislike this, but for me, it's tied into something very important, which is: I get to decide who I am. My parents don't. And that includes changing a name I have never in my entire life actually liked. The name I was born with never felt like me. Sami does. Sami IS.

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From: rainbow Date: June 15th, 2009 07:05 pm (UTC) (Link)

The name I was born with makes me actively unhappy. I am, in fact, going to change it legally

I so get this.

Chris started using "Chris" in the mid 70s because she'd always hated "Cindy" (and there were some people who had issues with it and tried to keep calling her Cindy. Mama A, otoh, was perfectly fine with it, and suggested simply ignoring them until they used the right name *g* )

Chris changed the body's name legally in the mid 80s -- and since she'd used our current surname for 10+ years by then with friends and had met our birth father recently and didn't want to use his name, she changed both first and last and just kept the middle.

I may not be that Chris (I'm Carys or Boo to the people who are closest to me, not Chris or Cats [Cats was the name that meant all of us]), but the legal name and "Cats" is still mine in a way the birth name never would be, because it's what soemone(s) in the body chose.

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From: elspethdixon Date: June 15th, 2009 04:07 pm (UTC) (Link)

I've found that I use different nicknames for different circumstances. Elspeth is my name in fandom. Liz is my name IRL. Elizabeth is my name in legal/formal settings. Beth, Betty, Betsy, Bess, Libby, and Eliza are not my name. I don't mind Elspeth being shortened to "Els," though, which I've seen people do more than once because they can't remember how to spell it.

I had a teacher in 6th grade who insisted on calling me "Beth" (instead of Elizabeth or Liz -- that was before I'd started going by Elspeth), and one customer at a former workplace who called me "Lisa," but both of them were old enough to be my grandparents and correcting them felt like it would have been rude. Someone closer to my age, I would have corrected (plus, I eventually realized that said customer actually was calling me "Liz" and his accent was putting a stress on the sibulant that just made it sound like "Lisa," whereupon I was really glad that I had never corrected him).

However, being called by a different nickname than the one I use isn't as annoying, IMO, as what one of my high school teachers used to do, which was refuse to use nicknames or call people by anything other than their legal first name at all. No "Zach" instead of Isaac, no "Liz" instead of Elizabeth, and definately no going by your middle name (every time he'd take attendance for the first week, he'd read out "William [lastname]" and there'd be a resounding silence, as everyone in the classroom stared at one another and tried to remember who on earth William was. Including William himself, whose middle name was Kenneth and who'd gone by "Kenny" since kindergarten).

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From: sami Date: June 15th, 2009 04:19 pm (UTC) (Link)

That's just being a jerk because you can.

Almost a shame he didn't have to deal with a family at my school. (There were a lot of them. ETA: Not all from the same *nuclear* family - cousins and things.) The family was from the Philippines, I think it was, and had some seriously Catholic traditions, so every girl in the family had the first name Maria.

Unsurprisingly, they went by their middle names, because those were actually different.

Edited 2009-06-15 04:20 pm (UTC)

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From: sqbr Date: June 16th, 2009 01:13 am (UTC) (Link)

Oh wow now I'm imagining them as Charlie and Jenny. That really is wrong :)

People sometimes call me Sophia and that annoys me because, again, not my name.

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From: sqbr Date: June 16th, 2009 12:44 am (UTC) (Link)

Oh that's a wonderful clip :)

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