I mean I want to name my first son Abe, but that’s because it was my grandfather’s americanized name (Ibrahim)
I think some geriatric sounding names are still respectable sounding enough to stand as good names for kids today. Dot and Conny I think would be good ones for girls and those are nicknames for Dorothy and Constance.
Looks like it. Names like Eleanor, Hazel, Lillian, Ellie and even Millie are in the top 100 baby names this year, and a couple of them are in the top 20 in the U.S.
You want to cite a source for that because I can’t find anything. Everything I’m finding says that before 1959 it was never used as a name and only as a word. And the name translates differently than Mildred.
Started as a coincidence, turned into a bit of a tradition. Before the M names we named them solely on characters from our favorite media (Ricky, Lucy, Ethel, fred, Jack for a character from The Talisman, Ellie Mae). We’ve fostered a lot, so there’s been a lot of names. But when we got Monty, for Monty Python, we then named the next one Mary, for Mary Tyler Moore. We decided to name her sister Maizie, and just run with it.
Engaging in sexual intercourse with Mildred is perfectly fine as long as there is mutual consent. However, it is not required. Kind words are usually sufficient.
I don’t think I could have sex with a woman named Mildred. Just imagine hitting it from behind, and then you remember her name is Mildred. You’d go soft like a wet noodle within seconds.
Honest question: Are there no limits in the US to what you can legally name your child? Where I’m from a name can be rejected if it can “cause significant harm or inconvenience to the child”. This prevents idiots from naming their child “Traitor” or “Terrorist”.
There are limits in many places, sometimes in response to that time the artist Prince changed his name to a symbol, in some cases all special characters are banned too, so good luck to anyone with a non-English name. But outside of that? In most states you could probably name your kid Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, much worse names have happened.
I think there’s been a couple of times where states have tried to stop individuals who have tried to name their kid Adolph Hitler or just some racist slogan, but I don’t remember how those went, it was a genuine legal question if those names could be blocked.
Name changes, however, are a different thing - often requiring a judge to approve them, they can be rejected simply due to the misfortune of being a trans person in Texas, for example. Unless it’s a name change due to marriage, those are significantly easier for some reason.
I used to watch Thought Slime a lot, even donated to them a few times… then started watching videos from the people they’ve “called out” on stream, followed a rabbit-hole of people who were hurt and never apologized to and realized they’re just another youtube dramafarmer clicks-at-all-costs, no discrimination, storyline-crafting liar. Like everyone.
edit: I know the parasocialism online runs really deep and just saying this is going to get some people losing their shit to defend their fav streamer, I literally don’t care, you have to be aware that every streamer has an army of knights to defend them, and I don’t like engaging that way and am not going to spend my time arguing. I’m not out to change your mind, just explain why I changed mine.
I don’t see what’s wrong with the name. What’s bad about housewifes¹ during the Great Depression? Those people have had their lives we could respect like we do Billies or Gretas today too.
¹Apart from gendered division of unpaid labour and care
Since I am not from the western hemisphere, I find it difficult to understand what is wrong with the name. Is it just that it sounds bad? Or any other reason?
This excerpt from the linked Wikipedia article for the name abstractly summarizes it nicely.
It reached the rank of the sixth most popular name for girls in the United States in 1912 and maintained that popularity through 1920, but then its popularity dropped quickly afterward.[2]
The name Mildred was very common about a hundred years ago, but never really at any other point since. If you see the name Mildred without seeing the person in question your first thoughts will be that they are extremely old. That’s really about it.
You can be Aagot, Arney or Ásfríður; Baldey, Bebba or Brá. Dögg, Dimmblá, Etna and Eybjört are fine; likewise Frigg, Glódís, Hörn and Ingunn. Jórlaug works OK, as do Obba, Sigurfljóð, Úranía and – should you choose – Vagna.
But you cannot, as a girl in Iceland, be called Harriet.
“The whole situation,” said Tristan Cardew, with very British understatement, “is really rather silly.”
Banning blatant slurs or directly offensive names is understandable, but unless Harriet means something really offensive there then it is just silly to have that restriction.
The article points out that it is mostly to conform with language structure, but that is still a bit heavy handed.
Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names
Patrick McKenzie
2010-06-17
John Graham-Cumming wrote an article today complaining about how a computer system he was working with described his last name as having invalid characters. It of course does not, because anything someone tells you is their name is — by definition — an appropriate identifier for them. John was understandably vexed about this situation, and he has every right to be, because names are central to our identities, virtually by definition.
I have lived in Japan for several years, programming in a professional capacity, and I have broken many systems by the simple expedient of being introduced into them. (Most people call me Patrick McKenzie, but I’ll acknowledge as correct any of six different “full” names, any many systems I deal with will accept precisely none of them.) Similarly, I’ve worked with Big Freaking Enterprises which, by dint of doing business globally, have theoretically designed their systems to allow all names to work in them. I have never seen a computer system which handles names properly and doubt one exists, anywhere.
So, as a public service, I’m going to list assumptions your systems probably make about names. All of these assumptions are wrong. Try to make less of them next time you write a system which touches names.
People have exactly one canonical full name.
People have exactly one full name which they go by.
People have, at this point in time, exactly one canonical full name.
People have, at this point in time, one full name which they go by.
People have exactly N names, for any value of N.
People’s names fit within a certain defined amount of space.
People’s names do not change.
People’s names change, but only at a certain enumerated set of events.
People’s names are written in ASCII.
People’s names are written in any single character set.
People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points.
People’s names are case sensitive.
People’s names are case insensitive.
People’s names sometimes have prefixes or suffixes, but you can safely ignore those.
People’s names do not contain numbers.
People’s names are not written in ALL CAPS.
People’s names are not written in all lower case letters.
People’s names have an order to them. Picking any ordering scheme will automatically result in consistent ordering among all systems, as long as both use the same ordering scheme for the same name.
People’s first names and last names are, by necessity, different.
People have last names, family names, or anything else which is shared by folks recognized as their relatives.
People’s names are globally unique.
People’s names are almost globally unique.
Alright alright but surely people’s names are diverse enough such that no million people share the same name.
My system will never have to deal with names from China.
Or Japan.
Or Korea.
Or Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Russia, Sweden, Botswana, South Africa, Trinidad, Haiti, France, or the Klingon Empire, all of which have “weird” naming schemes in common use.
That Klingon Empire thing was a joke, right?
Confound your cultural relativism! People in my society, at least, agree on one commonly accepted standard for names.
There exists an algorithm which transforms names and can be reversed losslessly. (Yes, yes, you can do it if your algorithm returns the input. You get a gold star.)
I can safely assume that this dictionary of bad words contains no people’s names in it.
People’s names are assigned at birth.
OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty close to birth.
Alright, alright, within a year or so of birth.
Five years?
You’re kidding me, right?
Two different systems containing data about the same person will use the same name for that person.
Two different data entry operators, given a person’s name, will by necessity enter bitwise equivalent strings on any single system, if the system is well-designed.
People whose names break my system are weird outliers. They should have had solid, acceptable names, like 田中太郎.
People have names.
This list is by no means exhaustive. If you need examples of real names which disprove any of the above commonly held misconceptions, I will happily introduce you to several. Feel free to add other misconceptions in the comments, and refer people to this post the next time they suggest a genius idea like a database table with a first_name and last_name column.
What would be an example of #8? Are there names which gradually morph from one name into another over time? In what way could a name change such that the change doesn’t occur at a specific point in time?
That one isn’t saying that names change gradually. It’s saying that names can change at any time and for any reason, not just e.g. when a woman gets married or something.
This generational. I’ve seen a number of names I thought of as grandma names come back into fashion. People who are young enough not to have experienced grandmas with those names pick them. Gertrude is a grandma name to me, BTW, not a great-grandma name. I actually had a grandma named Gertrude. Welcome to old. (Edit: my brain glitched from Mildred to Gertrude there. Looking forward to Alzheimers.)
I low-key hope Agnes doesn’t come back… that’s my middle name… can’t stand it. I know it was my great grandmothers name, but I never met the woman… and it just feels… harsh. (Probs because I only heard it when I was in trouble, or when people were making fun of me)
Plus side, my mom got talked out of naming me “Elsbeth”, which is a very very defunct precursor to Elizabeth (which she didn’t like)… Since frozen with Elsa, that probably would have been ok, but it didn’t come out until I was in my checks release very late 20s, by which point the damage would have been done.
But hey I can’t complain too much on the naming lottery… my sister has a fully 100% boys name. Her middle name is a French version of Patrick.
I wish my middle name Shay (its the name i go by)would come back or be a thing for men. I’ve only ever met 2 other people in my age range with it, and both were women, and the one person outside of my age range was an old old old woman. I dislike my first name to such a large extent that I choose to go by Shay.
I feel your pain. I wish I had a better first name or middle name to go by but I’m stuck between a shit place and a shitter place. And none of the nicknames I tried to get assigned actually worked out for me so… I either get nicknames I hate as much as the name itself or nothing. Super fun!
And if you want to change names, holy fuck, best of luck!
At least you have something you can relate to? I have never met anyone, of any gender, named Shay. I know that doesn’t necessarily help… but… it’s definitely not something I’d (as a solid middle age sort of person) consider a gendered name. Not more so than Aaron/Erin or any other neutral name…
When you meet new people just tell them whatever name you prefer even if it’s not your name. 2ish years ago, I started going by Shay by just telling people that. But there were people who have always known me by my other name, but I just told them I always hated that name, so call me Shay, and I gently corrected them every time they called me by my other name. The only people who still call me by me og name is my wife and my girlfriend(poly relationship not cheating), but they are working on it.
There’s no name I actively want to go by, is the problem. I’ve tried with minor changes but nobody took them and they aren’t things I can just be like “this is me” because it… wouldn’t be actually? I’m envious of people who have the option to choose their own name, or how to apply it. Mine is so short there’s like 2 nickname options and I hate both. Passionately.
Best I’ve ever come up with would take a full name change (first middle last) to be worth doing. And that’s not worth doing.
I’m super glad it was effective for you, though, honestly that’s what matters. If it matters enough that you have a preference, it matters. My preference is just “anything else please” and that’s not a good option for most people, which… legit.
No judgement on your relationships, whatever works. I haven’t the energy to be weird about it :)
Well, im sorry to hear that. I get how you feel, and I hope it can change for you if that’s what you want. Ya polyamory is hard work and a lot of communication, but it can be super rewarding when it works.
As a trans woman, fuck yeah Mildred. Take that awful name and make it your own. Sure you could’ve been a Megan or a Maria or even a McKenzie, but anyone could pull those off. You chose Mildred to flex on us plebs
So many of us have a ridiculous name. I kept mine to my middle name, but so many don’t, so I can just fully embrace someone deciding she’s talking great grandma’s name and damn the consequences
I actually sort of am the opposite! Growing up my deadname had an unusual spelling. It was literally immposible for someone to spell it correctly on their first attempt. So every form filled out on my behalf had to be corrected, everytime my name was called there would be a double checking moment who I am. It was just a huge giant pain in the ass and even as a kid I knew I would change it, even for non trans reasons. So my chosen name is much more basic, it’s actually one of the most popular names for my birth year.
I can’t tell ya what a sigh of relief I give off when a cashier asks my name and just spells it correctly without giving it thought. that I can say who I am and people just… know that it’s the person on the forum. So y’all are 10,000,000% valid and I love your damn the consequences vibes! But for me? I’m so happy with my basic simple unremarkable name.
I get that, unfortunately my hard to spell name is my last name and I liked it too much to change it. I also didn’t realize that my common name has so many spellings, but by fuck do a lot of people insist on proving that. I also just like having a name that doesn’t instantly draw people’s attention, especially since my last name does.
My middle name on the other hand is fucking ridiculous, but it’s easy to spell so there’s that.
cishet dude here so i dunno how much what I’m about to say matters but I’ve always liked the name Eleanor(e) because The Practice is my favorite procedural series and in that show Eleanor was a badass woman with strong convictions and morals.
she also was in one of the coolest scenes in tv imo, having a very heated argument entirely in sign language. here’s an unfortunately terrible recording of it: youtu.be/CwV9dHHQj-8
anyway i think Eleanore is a cool name, but more than that, once people associate it with you that’s what they will think about when they hear the name, the kind of person you are. not the other way around.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
Merely this and nothing more.
lemmy.today
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