Salon.com's Broadsheet had a piece the other day on baby-naming -- actually it was called "Baby Branding"
This paragraph caught my eye:
My inexpert opinion is that the current preoccupation with baby naming mirrors our cultural obsession with personal expression in a time when our individual sense of political power is on the wane. In an ideal world, having a baby expresses faith in the future -- a faith many parents so conscious of food additives and melting ice caps may not have. In naming a baby you get to engage in a massive act of pure parental projection -- perhaps for the last time.
I think it grabbed me because in my organizing work I think a lot about the cultural obsession with personal expression trumping political/collective action. If we could channel that obsession into action, think what we could do. But what would we name our babies if we did that instead? Perhaps that's why my activist friends pick nice good old fashioned names like Michael, Emma, Max, Charlie? Although from what I understand nice good old fashioned names are all the rage nowdays too.
Thoughts?
posted by Marcia @ 7:02 AM
4 Comments:
I don't feel like I understand what she means by comparing the act of naming to an act of pure parental projection for the last time. Don't parents continue to project on you all through life? Wanting you to have the life and the opportunities they never had?
And obsession over names isn't a new thing. My parents didn't do it, but I have heard stories of people consulting fortune tellers in Taiwan before they named their children. You bring them the date and time of the birth and maybe other information, too, and then they tell you how many strokes should be in the characters of their names for it to be auspicious. Sometimes they tell you to include the symbol for "fire" or other elements to counterbalance a naturally negative influence on the child's life. I've also had friends who changed their name to change their luck.
As for me, I feel like names have meaning, and that would be the reason it would take me so long to come up with names. I remember doing a project in fourth grade to trace the origin of my name and thought my parents were exceedingly clever with my Chinese name. (It means full of positive and virtuous qualities. Talk about false advertising!)
What a great point! Obsessing about naming is not new. In fact, perhaps the thing that is new is the po-mo obsession about the obsessing about baby names!
Love the meaning of your name suz! You are full of positive and virtuous qualities. You may not be "positive" but you buckets of positive qualities.
I was named after my mom's college roommate and one of my dad's highschool friends -- 2 different women who had the same first name. I don't know that I was really named after them specifically -- they both just liked that name.
Ramona? Nancy?
I was named after both of my grandmothers, which is why I insistently use the hyphenated name - because otherwise my paternal grandmother gets left out!
http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/B/BUSINESS_OF_LIFE?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
you have to domain-name your baby, too!
Post a Comment
<< Home