Choosing your child's name is a big decision--after all, he'll be walking around with it for the rest of his life. And according to Laura Wattenberg, author of The Baby Name Wizard, when a child is born, the name reflects more on you than him. "The name doesn't belong to you--you're making the decision because your child can't do it for himself--but what you choose does say a lot about your personality."Emphasis mine, because hello: GENDER NEUTRAL LANGUAGE, PEOPLE!!!
But as your child gets older, the name will also reflect on him--especially when he's doing things like sending out job resumes. "People do draw conclusions based on someone's name," says Wattenberg. "It sends out such a strong signal before the person even walks into the room."
Seriously, the story gets totally derailed in my head, and it's like the HEs and HIMs are screaming at me. This occurs every time I read something that doesn't adhere to the gender neutral format.
Not that the article isn't one big set of Duhs after another - with a few sprinklings of Stoopid:
"I suspect that many who name their child after a celebrity are speaking to their own desire for optimal fame," says Korwitts. "For instance, Mariah Carey has struggled a great deal during her career with her self-image, etc. No doubt in her mind she has held favorites stars of the past in high esteem, so in naming her daughter Monroe, she is paying homage to that admiration." What's especially interesting, notes Korwitts, is that Mariah didn't opt for the first name--she chose the surname as a first name, which speaks even more to the particular celebrity. "To have chosen Marilyn would have meant very little," she says. "She needed to make a public statement with her children's names."Are the people quoted in this article real humans? And like, is the author a person, or just a web portal robo-reporter?
2 comments:
Can we please invent a singular pronoun that is gender neutral already? Who has the power to make this happen?
I usually avoid my own criticism by sticking with a singular they/them/their, or by saying "one" as in "one should use gender neutral pronouns, dammit!" (But "one" sounds snotty.) In many blogs and sites I frequent on the 'net, people will use "zie/ze/zir/hir." In some ways I feel frustrated that many people don't seem to view this as an important issue; but on the otherhand, it's not like I spend my days being pissed off about it - I mean, much of the stuff I come across IS gender neutral. (And I do have patience for older texts.) So I think people are slowly changing. What it would really take though is for our public education system - including the whoever writes standardizes tests, the SAT, the ACT - to formally adopt it as "proper grammar" and make a big deal about it. :D
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