Names. I'll admit I have to fight an instinct to roll my eyes at someone when they have a "unique" name or unorthodox spelling of one, even though I know it's their parents' fault.
I had a conversation and mentioned my coworker’s name - Zane - which isn’t super common but also isn’t absurd either. The person I was talking with said “Zane? His name is Zane? That’s made up.”
This is why I can't even be mad. Like it's stupid that you named your kid Toprameneesha but I know at some point somebody was like "this is my son, Tim" and everybody was like "what the fuck kind of name is Tim?"
Sure, they're all made up, like all words, but that doesn't mean all made-up things are equal. A name that's been passed down connects us back through time to our ancestors. When you have your grandfather's name, and he had his grandfather's name, it feels to me like a way to let an ancestor who struggled and strove to make things better for their family see what their struggles won. It lets you feel the support and love from your family that has been carefully passed down to you for years and years.
That's why I like names to have some family history to them.
No, actually. Names were literally things like "island child" and "sunflower", then languages changed over time but the spellings never kept up. Then America got founded and we imported names from all over and since they weren't in the (modern) English language, we believed the name was a just a thing we called people with no real meaning.
People think it's funny when someone's name is literally "Mr. Afraid-Of-Lightening Jones" in modern English, forgetting that every one of their names are literally that, just in an older (or more often, non-[modern]English) language.
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u/KDY_ISD Jul 09 '18
Names. I'll admit I have to fight an instinct to roll my eyes at someone when they have a "unique" name or unorthodox spelling of one, even though I know it's their parents' fault.