CFC Linguistics - Names, Nouns, Pronunciation, oh my! (from Random Raves LII)

A woman who works in the same building as me started using her Chinese name. She went through 3 different 'American' names before going back to the name her momma gave her.

I haven't asked her, but I wonder if somebody told her that she needed an "American-sounding" name in the US. It's certainly been common here, from time immemorial, for immigrants from all over the world to adopt a new name - a first name or a surname or both - to sound more American. I think in a lot of cases, it was foisted upon them. Of course I want anyone to feel free to change their name if they want to, for any reason - I know a Korean-American woman who prefers her 'American' name to the one on her birth certificate - but I'd like people to feel like they don't have to if they don't want to. In the case of this Chinese woman, I don't know if (a) the pressure to conform has lightened enough that she's comfortable using her Chinese name; or (b) she's just decided to be her own woman and her name is her name, gosh darn it; or (c) she's decided she can't cover her face or smooth out her accent and people are randomly punching Asians in the streets anyway, so f it. I hope it's (a), and (b) would be kind of sexy, but I'm worried it could be (c). I guess I'm choosing to believe it's (a) or (b), which is why I'm calling it a rave, but I feel like I have to acknowledge the asterisk. I don't feel like I know her well enough to just ask.

Depends when they desired a name change.

If they were already thinking of a new name before arriving in 'the west', it's from a desire to assimilate. The belief that things will be easier with a western sounding name. Can't blame the west for this, as most of the time this is misconceptions the person got from their home country about what life would be like.

Name change might not change things as much as they thought it would, but they don't know that before getting here. For some names, a name change can really help alot (if an English speaker trying to pronounce it makes it sound really embarrassing, or is exceptionally difficult to pronounce), for other names there won't be much, if any change at all. It can be annoying to have your name mispronounced, it's so much worse if a mispronounced name ends up being the target of jokes (especially for kids who are more likely to make fun of stuff like that).

If they desire the change after getting and living here awhile, then that is much more likely the fault of 'the west' because it was probably more based on issues they had with their name while living in the west.

My wife wanted to use an 'American' first name, but didn't legally change it, so it was used informally. Don't do this. That just complicates everything, living with two different names. Legal documents, name tag at work, doctor appointments, etc. were using her Chinese name. I talk to someone and mention her or set up an appointment for her using her American name and they think I am talking about someone else. The american name was dropped for practicality since it wasn't a big enough issue to bother legally changing it (changing it on all immigration papers and passports makes it more difficult than your usual name change).

Her Chinese name doesn't look complicated to pronounce, but it is 99% guaranteed it will be mispronounced, because the spelling of the name goes against what every English speakers would think to pronounce it (the ones to get it right have previous experience with that name). She just accepts that people will always say it wrong, doesn't correct people until she feels closer to them.

Her daughter has a name that would look more difficult for an English speaker to get right, so is more often asked for pronunciation instead of assuming they can get it right. In school in kindergarten, teachers say it wrong (despite meeting the teacher beforehand and telling her the right way to say it), she didn't correct the teacher, then it got to the point that was her name and she herself would be telling people the wrong name. So at a birthday party me and her mother are being told by her classmates we are saying her name wrong!
 
Last edited:
Ignorant is often used to mean "stupid", rather than "uninformed (generally, or about a specific thing)." I definitely don't want people to think I mean "stupid" when I say ignorant (if I want to call someone stupid, there are lots of words for that) so I usually just settle on "uninformed." I'm not 100% satisfied with that, but I'm unable to put my finger on exactly what the difference. It may turn out to be your classic 'distinction without a difference.'

---

These days, Atheism is commonly understood as an affirmative claim that there is no God, rather than simply lacking a belief that there is a God. Like I say, the difference is nuanced, and I don't actually mind people using the word that way, the problem is that I don't have a good word to mean what I mean anymore. I've tried calling myself a "soft agnostic" and an "agnatheist", but obviously I always have to explain what those mean. And the word atheist is frequently used to paint people as illogical and obstinate, perhaps hypocrites, in an attempt to put us on the back foot and make us out to be the ones who are being unreasonable and stubborn. Some people immediately jump to atheists being "militant" or "having a chip on their shoulder", and some few people go a step further and try to make atheism seems like a whole belief system.

Smug agnostics contribute to this, as though fanciful claims need to be empirically disproven before they can be dismissed. As someone who believes the burden of evidence lies with the claimant, agnosticism just sounds like a way of squirming out of a conversation they don't feel like having to me (which would be fine with me, if they didn't act like they occupied the higher intellectual ground). I saw a website somewhere that proposed a distinction between "soft agnosticism" and "hard agnosticism", where the soft version says that the burden of evidence is with the claimant and not with the skeptic.

As defined "a belief there is no God", I'm not sure "atheist" is really that useful a word. Off the top of my head, everyone I know who's an atheist would be better described as a skeptical agnostic, a soft agnostic, who believes the "circumstantial evidence" doesn't seem to support the claim, that there's no empirical evidence, but we're unlikely to ever get any. I don't know if I know anyone who firmly believes there is no God. If I do, they're not very vocal about it, but why would they be? The word atheist, to mean "an affirmative belief there is no God" is almost always used as a pejorative to describe someone else. As mentioned above, "Godless" used to be used that way, to denounce someone as a heathen. "Atheist" is the new "Godless."

Relatedly, I think a lot of people don't understand "secular", either, although that word comes up a lot less frequently. (In my more cynical moods, I suspect some people choose to smother conversation by deliberately conflating terms, calling a secular person or idea "atheist" to confuse people when they're unable to convince people.)



A digression on (in)famous 'atheists' Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens:
Spoiler :
Dawkins, even though he's often portrayed as one of the premier "militant atheists", is actually an agnostic who believes it's not incumbent upon the skeptic to disprove the fanciful claim. He's an opinionated and educated agnostic who gets published and gives talks and who's happy to engage theists in debate. So people get aggravated and throw stones. Happens to a lot of people. It's been a while since I read his book, but I think he tried out the term "agnostic-atheist" to describe his brand of disbelief, but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. That's why I tried out "agnatheist" for a while, but I got tired of that one, too.

I liked Hitchens for his militant secularism, not militant atheism. I don't even know if he was an atheist at all, by the modern, common definition. He might have been more like Dawkins, a skeptical agnostic, but I think that debate wasn't really worth having to him (although he did sometimes - there's an interesting documentary about Hitchens and his good friend who was a pastor who went on a debate tour together). I've never read his book, but I've seen many of his recorded speaking engagements and heard him interviewed on the radio and podcasts. My understanding was that he believed that the Earthly, material consequences of virulent religious belief were dangerous, occasionally lethal, and that was the important stuff. I can't remember it verbatim, but he once said something like, "I would be happy to live and let live, but there are religious zealots who simply cannot do the same." I think he believed in a hard separation of church and state, and that "freedom of religion" had to include freedom from religion, or it was hollow and meaningless. Secular, in other words. He also just loved the fight, almost like a boxer, which is why he's regarded as pugnacious. I think he was happy to be considered pugnacious. He freely admitted that he enjoyed going on Fox News, just for the gladiatorial contest, to vanquish his adversaries in front of the baying crowd.

That the burden of evidence lies with the claimant and not with the skeptic is a founding principle of our legal system today (thank God :p ). When Donald Trump's lackeys tried to overturn our recent election with fanciful stories, they were thrown out of no fewer than 66 courts of law for not even having enough evidence to warrant a hearing.
The distinctions as I understand it:
  • Hard atheism = I believe there is no god
  • Soft atheism = I do not believe there is a god
  • Hard agnosticism = I believe that if there is a god or not is unknowable
  • Soft agnosticism = I do not know if there is a god or not
Considering how common the position somewhere between soft atheism and soft agnosticism is to assume people do not mean that when they say atheist is just being obtuse.
 
It isn't possible to actually prove there is a (specific) god, though. Any sufficiently advanced tech can be used to present something that looks like Jesus or similar. The main issue would be whether anyone would actually spend so much (assuming the tech was there) just to fool people, but maybe such a tech isn't that costly for a very advanced species or even a superpower government with enough resources.
Then again, if someone did something really incredible (say, took you to your own past and left you there to go through life again, and assuming it wasn't just a delusion), and claimed they were a god, you might as well believe them :dunno:
Still could be just tech and not related to a god.

I think that from the gods I have read about, nothing really makes much sense/has a reason to actually exist, unless they are just gods relative to humans - which isn't that impressive; any human is relatively a god next to any other type of being on Earth.
 
I haven't asked her, but I wonder if somebody told her that she needed an "American-sounding" name in the US. It's certainly been common here, from time immemorial, for immigrants from all over the world to adopt a new name - a first name or a surname or both - to sound more American. I think in a lot of cases, it was foisted upon them.
From my experience people do it mostly to avoid awkward moments, when their "true" names are hard to pronounce or sound strange/funny for locals.
 
From my experience people do it mostly to avoid awkward moments, when their "true" names are hard to pronounce or sound strange/funny for locals.
In her case, her name isn't hard to pronounce, but yes, I think you're probably right. I also think (some) immigrants are sensitive about how foreigners are treated here. Some years ago, I was chatting with an Indian woman I had only just met. She looked Indian, sounded Indian, pretty strong accent, but when I asked her where she was from, she said "Baltimore." She wasn't hiding the fact that she was Indian - she couldn't have if she'd tried - but she didn't want it to be part of the conversation, for whatever reason. At least, not right then. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk about India; as we got to know each other, we talked about India a lot.
 
Language changes all the time. The unusual thing of late is that spelling has mostly not done so, due to universal literacy and the proliferation of dictionaries.
That's if by 'of late' you mean over the last 400 years... I mean the differences in spelling since are comparatively minor... while the Great Vowel Shift and further dialectal changes have since completely changed how words are pronounced.
 
Last edited:
In her case, her name isn't hard to pronounce, but yes, I think you're probably right. I also think (some) immigrants are sensitive about how foreigners are treated here. Some years ago, I was chatting with an Indian woman I had only just met. She looked Indian, sounded Indian, pretty strong accent, but when I asked her where she was from, she said "Baltimore." She wasn't hiding the fact that she was Indian - she couldn't have if she'd tried - but she didn't want it to be part of the conversation, for whatever reason. At least, not right then. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk about India; as we got to know each other, we talked about India a lot.
I had a classmate last year who always said he was from Texas, despite being born and raised in New York and spent most of his adult life in California. :p
 
Personally I'd like to provide Europeans with a Latinised name for myself, instead of forcing them out of their own accent to pronounce my birthname.
 
I had a classmate last year who always said he was from Texas, despite being born and raised in New York and spent most of his adult life in California. :p
Well, that's New Yorkers for you. Almost impossible to get them to tell you where they're from. Wallflowers.

There may be a city named Baltimore in India too :dunno:
Renowned for its curried crab and rounders team.
 
That's if by spelling you mean over the last 400 years... I mean the differences in spelling since are comparatively minor... while the Great Vowel Shift and further dialectal changes have since completely changed how words are pronounced.

Well, yes, that's what I meant. Ever since the advent of printing and rapidly increasing literacy, people have been interested in spelling. I think the first book on punctuation use was the 1590s!
 
We only capitalise the starts of sentences and the first letters of proper nouns, including God himself.
And also Things Written Using Title Case (2021).
 
Well, yes, but I didn't think I needed to specify "when using sentence case".
 
I still think your flag looks like what a nazi group which also was non-binary would use :p
It just lacks the joyful colors one associates with lgbt etc.
Even the purple tone is peasant-purple, not royal :(
 
Yes, well, I didn't design the flag.
 
Top Bottom