Contentious doll names - gods and so on.

Or else your experience might be like this guy's.

There are some names I wouldn't inflict anyone, doll, animal or human with. I work in an airport, so I see plenty of IDs, boarding passes, employee badges, etc.

One airport employee's name is Kashyrr R. Credit.

Southwest Airlines likes to print passenger's surname first, then the given name. I feel much pain for "Gay/Dick."

Then there was Melissa Screws, and her husband, Michael Screws.

I swear to whatever higher powers there are I am not making any of these names up. The worst surname I have seen so far was probably "Sickendick."

Dude, just change your name to "John/Jane Smith."

Naming a doll like that would elicit the same sort of reaction from me: "WTF were you thinking?!"

 

I wouldn't name my doll Coraline. I read the book (fairly creepy) and my friends were like "You should name your doll Coraline!" No, thank you!

I mean a girl who almost gets buttons sewn into her eyes...and has a hand follow her around....I just...couldn't to it. Every time I looked at the doll, a little voice in the back of my mind would say "buttons! buttons!"

 

The problem is that all names are based on Kanji. There are only a limited amount of kanji that are used for names, but the on and ka reading of each kanji can be used, romanji alone doesn't really get you out of trouble.
There's a huge reason why people when meeting each other for the first time say their names and each kanji comprised with it.

 

For convinces sake I'm sure that many people do write their name in hiragana butI don't know where you heard that from but most names are still written in Kanji. There are certain situations where this might change (i.e. being a Japanese American with an American sounding last name). Most people know the kanji because there are a certain amount like I said but the On and Ka readings both can be used. But it's not really popular to use them.

Also name cards are given every time that you meet a new person. And one of the main reasons is to get ranked. Because under that name is also the job that you have. This is one way how social hierarchy is made in Japan. Some last names have a higher social rank than others.

Edit: I might not have said this but now's a good time. I grew up in Japan, so I think I might be looking too much into this. You can name a doll whatever you please but I think without knowing how naming works of that certain cultural background I believe it to be slipshod.

 

While we're talking about funny names... My mother told me about when she used to work for an insurance agency and had to call people to tell them their payments were overdue and stuff. She gets to the next name on the list and it's "Mary Clapsaddle". Clapsaddle. Seriously.

Anyways. I tend to avoid naming things after anime characters. As people have said, it's overdone. I like names with meaning behind them. Though, religious names are a bit of a no-no. I don't think my stepmother would appreciate me naming a doll Jesus. In fact, I think she'd try to exorsize me.

 

I work in a Japanese middle school, and many girls have given names that are entirely written with hiragana. Now, I don't know for certain that those girls don't have kanji associated with their given names, but between my experience and the scuttlebutt I've picked up reading forum threads about, for example, ex-pats' experiences choosing baby names with their Japanese spouses, I'm pretty sure that hiragana names go a little beyond convenient furigana for unusual kanji.

I'm also a little unsure as to how the fact that there are kanji associated with a name plays into whether or not it's contentious, especially if the person is limiting herself to names that she knows by example are names, rather than just looking up words in the dictionary.

So here's my back-on-topic question: does a name become "contentious" if the person using it does not appear to understand its meaning? Does a name become contentious if the person only uses certain aspects of it (for example, using a Japanese name without knowing the kanji, or me going around calling my dolls Vasilisa and Rada instead of Василиса and Рада (the appropriate cyrillic spellings), or someone giving their doll a Chinese name but not pronouncing the tones)?

 

This was one of the reasons I called my Orientdoll SO Ye vamp 'Haiku' - that being, along with 'sushi', 'teriyaki' and 'domo arigato Mr. Roboto' being the only Japanese I came in contact with growing up in the prairies (Also because he is tiny, elegant, and variable as a rainbow with his interchangeable wing sets...which I need to finish painting, eep!)

I think 'Jesus' -with the south-central Americas pronunciation 'hay-zus'- could work really well for a certain kind of doll - like Elfdoll's special MIR, is what jumps to mind.

There was a kid named 'Thor' in my highschool - traditional family name, I believe. There was also a guy named 'Galen'.

I have warned some people off naming dolls from Arctic legend - a lady on another board was considering 'Sedna' and -while I was thrilled she'd researched enuff to find the name, we're pretty obscure- I had to let her know that Sedna/Nuliajuk is a...capricious entity and slapping her moniker on a doll might invite a host of misfortune (especially if one happened to live in a coastal area).

Generally, I think it's unnecessary to pillage other cultures to get a good and fitting name for a doll. I'd discourage other owners from choosing names that need special characters, too - it's a pain in the butt to ensure my Kelda Curaçao is depicted correctly in text!

I would like to name a doll 'Grätuitṏus Ṻmlauẗ' one day

 

Well, my Bonbon, pink, no less, says her first name is Barbara. And yes, she wants the nickname.
Kind of embarassing; I do own a BarbieTM, y'know.

Ann in CT

p.s. Jesus, back to Hebrew, back to English, is Joshua. I don't know of anyone who would find "Joshua" inappopriate, maybe not special enough, but ordinary. AC

 

I love it!

I think it's unnecesary to borrow from other cultures too unless the character you have for your doll really, really needs it, there are awesome and unusual names that exist in English. There was a woman who fought in the American civil war called 'Melverina Elverina Peppercorn' *bows to that woman's parents* and Puritans in the 17th century had an ocean of excellent and bizarre names.

I use a lot of Welsh names for my dolls because I'm Welsh. I speak Welsh and I obviously understand it, so it's natural for me to use both English names and Welsh names because I know naming conventions in both languages.

Then again, I sort of always believed it would be right to name the doll from the culture they came from. Most of my dolls are Korean and I wrestled with giving them all Korean names...but then I felt it wouldn't be entirely right for me or right for them because I don't know many Korean names and I'm not naming them all Ban Ki-Moon

 

How is using a name in any way equivalent to "pillaging"? Can you have a melting-pot culture like America's if nobody ever strays outside the family canon when naming the baby?

Happy fun naming anecdote time: My family is Italian, but for some reason they named me Jennifer (a "pillaged" Celtic name?!), and nobody has ever started a race riot about it. Nobody has ever beaten me up at a Renaissance Faire for having such a name while looking so obviously non-Celtic-based. In fact, I am the only one who has ever complained, owing to the dismaying fact that there were 6 other Jennifers in my kindergarten class. For that matter, there was a girl named Madonna who lived one town over, and once we hit junior-high (1983 = "Like A Virgin" released) she never lived that name down. Italians don't play that "do not invoke" brand of reverence... instead of not-naming the gods and powers, they name their kids after whole strings of saints, martyrs, the Trinity, anybody whose mojo you want in your family. So Madonna is a perfectly normal name if you happen to live in an Italian area, and nobody thought much of that poor girl's name until Teh Madonna got famous. After which point the name changed hands completely, from Catholic canon to pop culture. As annoying as being Jennifer #6 was, I was always secretly a little thankful that Mom & Pop decided to go modern, and not name me Madonna Louise. We live in an immigrant-culture country, here, so a mashup of names is no sin.... But it can take some interesting swerves.

And I will be there to rawk at him.

 

Please, please do this. I'll vote it as #1 name of the year.

Edited to add: where I live we have no culture. Really. Lots of corn (and football), but no culture. I think that's why people make grabby hands at names from different regions. It's all we have.

 

::points to her personal location:: not everyone is American, y'know. Here in Canada, we don't 'melt' (too damn cold for that!) - it's referred to more often as a 'mosaic', I been told. And frankly, I don't want everything homogenized in one big 'melting pot' - I like other cultures, and I like that they are different from mine.

'Pillage' was meant in a humourous fashion, with arrrrR!piracy and vikings (& possibly beekeepers) attached -as terribly 'serios' as ''Grätuitṏus Ṻmlauẗ'". I just think there's lots of wonderful, completely original names available right within one's personal experience and knowledge. And looking up words in a 'foreign' dictionary to find an exotic name for doll or baby is just kinda...I dunno...tacky? Here in the Arctic, there is a lot of concern about 'cultural appropriation', wherein non-northern or non-aboriginal people make art and craft items that mimic traditional native arts from the region, and that concern extends to language.

I wouldn't give a child or doll an Inuvialuktun name without consulting with an elder, because that is the way it is done, and I respect the culture. My opinion, ymmv.

 

Are you taking into consideration that almost all "English" names are in fact names and/or words that have been absorbed by the English language from other languages or cultures? From what I understand, Kimberly was originally a Gaelic phrase referring to the clearing where a fort would be found, but it must have sounded pretty to someone long ago who wrote it down and liked it as a name. It's not an English word and my family is neither Celtic nor English in origin, they're still fairly recent Polish immigrants. I think it would be silly to accuse my older sister of cultural appropriation because she picked a name for me that was outside of our family's ethnic background because she liked the way it sounded.

The names that are common around us probably weren't very common a generation or two ago, and I bet it was people looking through naming books and even foreign dictionaries to find something interesting that found a lot of those names and brought them to the forefront.

 

I don't mind any name for a doll, i think it is good that people use names from other cultures, it shows that we take an intrest in other people and places. I believe that it can be good to use a name from another country. however the namer of the doll must be certain on the meaning, i would advise caution. i once heard about someone who wanted thier girlfriends name tatooed on their back in kanji but ended up with kanji spelling out the name of some brand, i can never remember what, on their back.
i personally like to pick random words or names because i like the sound and change them slightly. only from english of course, i don't know anyother language well enough to start playing around with it.
The name of my soon to be arriving doll will be Slate, i have reasons....... but mainly because i am slightly odd

 

Absolutely - like I said, ymmv. I'm aware of 'cultural appropriation' issues because I have to live with it everytime I consider an image for my artzes, and everytime I have to answer the question "why do you draw tigers? polar bears would sell much better"

I can attest that the names around us were not so popular a generation or two ago, because I am older than a couple of generations. I also had to teach a weekly art class of little kids in the 'year of the Jasmine's' (six kids named 'Jasmine' in a class of thirty? yeesh. at least if I couldn't recall a girl's name, 'Jasmine' was a pretty safe bet). Now, Jasmine as a guy's name, there is something with potential...'Jazz' as a nickname, it could work.

I just find it more interesting -personally- to come up with names out of the imagination, as fits the doll, and much less likely to insult anyone's cultural sensibilities, as a bonus. Or accidentally name your doll 'inhaler sardine' or 'pantyhose termite' by mistake because it sounded cool, or you typoed on a syllable.

 

I must say that as a descendant of nordic heathens, we take the old deities and their names really lightly around here. We're actually rather amused by this hype around "Loki", because people seem convinced that he is a cool and evil archetype while he is actually more of a fool/clown in the old mythologies. He did some things with a horse that would be considered very taboo today to name one example *snerk* and was in fact nothing more than a cowardly idiot that wasn't really interested in anything besides pleasing himself at the cost of others. Most of the norse deities were more flawed than regular people, and if one actually reads through the Eddas and the Sagas, they don't spend half so much time fighting heroically as they do drinking and falling headfirst over one another. X3

On the other hand I am also a native speaker of (the currently trendy and hip) Icelandic, and it can be VERY funny to come across people who have snatched a word here and there to make up some jumbles to name their dolls/cats/plants/whatever. XP Did you know that there are more people in this world that speak Klingon than speak Icelandic? And that icelandic is actually Old Norse, mostly unchanged (a little enhanced, mayhaps)?

 

I adore Hebrew and I love the way it looks written down and the way it sounds when spoken, but I don't know it well enough to use it for much, be it naming a doll or putting together a phrase for a tattoo. I would be very curious to know whether Victoria Beckham's Hebrew tattoo (which apparently says 'my beloved is mine and I am his') is actually written correctly, or whether it's gibberish!

There is also the risk of looking stupid when pronouncing your doll's foreign name the way you think it is supposed to sound in front of speakers of that language who know how it is really supposed to sound. I don't want to embarrass anybody and I want to save as many feelings as I can, but when I hear someone pronouncing a Welsh word incorrectly I will step in and help them. 1) I can't stand someone mangling my language if I can do something about it, 2) every language learner benefits from gentle correction, and 3) if I let them continue, another Welsh speaker may correct them in a less kindly manner.