Effect of children's names

Bob.

Fuck if I know, man. :idunno:

That’s actually not a bad name for a parrot.

Ask @the_bear, I think he and ZD had one of them FWB deals.

I think it’s name was Ebeneezer…unless that was ZD’s safe word and I just forgot it…

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Some things you can never unsee.

At least Rosie weighed under 300 lb back then.

Danny too.

That that data is quite old. Actually, that BOOK is quite old, and the data is even older.

Noop. Not what I meant at all.

Social data/opinions like this change very quickly. Does ANYONE talk about Gay marriage anymore?

What should bother you more, as an otherwise intelligent people, is your knee jerkiness. :whistle:

BTW, after a sliver of research into Black Sounding Names, I happened across this:

where it is thusly stated, quoted in fact from Freakonomics:
In 2005, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, authors of Freakonomics, in a piece for Slate, “A Roshanda by Any Other Name,” found that it wasn’t the names as much as it was impoverished living conditions that were holding back uniquely named children:

The data show that, on average, a person with a distinctively black name—whether it is a woman named Imani or a man named DeShawn—does have a worse life outcome than a woman named Molly or a man named Jake. But it isn’t the fault of his or her name . If two black boys, Jake Williams and DeShawn Williams, are born in the same neighborhood and into the same familial and economic circumstances, they would likely have similar life outcomes. But the kind of parents who name their son Jake don’t tend to live in the same neighborhoods or share economic circumstances with the kind of parents who name their son DeShawn. And that’s why, on average, a boy named Jake will tend to earn more money and get more education than a boy named DeShawn. DeShawn’s name is an indicator—but not a cause—of his life path.

:idunno:

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Some parents doom their kids to a lifetime of being asked “How do you spell that?” and “How do you pronounce that?” when naming them.

My students come from The Sudan, Swahili and Kinyarwanda speaking Congolese refugees, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chuuk, Bangladesh, and they all have “unique” sounding names.

I think the Freakonomics guys’ point was that despite the name bias, the economic status is the far more important determiner of success.

“Doom them?” Hardly. That’s just your bias. Dazadia and Ameliana, both first graders, would disagree that their name is burdening them.

This is sensible, and it’s a large part of the story, but the problem is this: prejudices are based on reality. They encapsulate, in a very boiled-down form, some conventional experience. As he goes through life, people will make assumptions about DeShawn’s parents (ie., that they’re idiots) and will assume that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. And they will be right more often than they’re wrong.

People do modify their prejudices after extended interactions. But DeShawn might never get that opportunity in a lot of situations were it matters.

Just to be clear, the issue here is not the uniqueness of the name. It’s how stupid it sounds in its cultural context. Most people can grasp that a foreigner might be called YoYo because those phonemes aren’t inherently funny in his native language, but if an American is called Yoyo, it’s probably because his parents are idiots.

I actually have a friend named Yoyo. Of course, it helps that Yo means “superior” in Chinese.

The cello player?

EDIT: That probably should be cellist.

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Wow.

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Some celebrities are on some stupid fucking shit when it comes to naming their kids, but it doesn’t matter because it’s so-and-so’s child and they’re already set for life.

If you think your brain works differently to everyone else’s, you’re just kidding yourself.

Denying that this sort of thing is a problem doesn’t help anybody. Iceland have got the right idea here: if a parent wants to register a stupid name, the State says no. Overbearing? Yes. But it goes some small way to ensuring everyone gets a fair shot at life.

As a wise man once said:“You hang out with smart people, you get smart friends. You hang out with yo-yo people, you get yo-yo friends!”

Yes, but names are not the deciding factor; financial status during childhood is far more important. And who decides if a name is “stupid?”