I was also mocked for things entirely beyond my control. For years. It probably makes me a little knee jerk on bullying, but I just hate to see it in a community that I thought would be above such behaviors. It doesn’t make me feel particularly safe and welcome.
[ETA] Also, I’ll note that I regularly have students with usual names in my classes and I live in fear of not getting their names correct. It’s a basic dignity thing, to try and listen to someone’s name and get it correct. It’s as critical as respecting their gender or racial identity.
The suggestion in jest I got from an online acquaintance was to have 2 more boys… The sprog is named Charles the hypothetical brothers would be Nelson and Riley.
And that is probably something I would have tried if I didn’t want to stop (and much more importantly the Mrs wanted to stop) after the first.
I agree, and being in a specialty with a few thousand people worldwide, I too run into names I have trouble with. I don’t always get it right, but I sure as shit don’t laugh at them. Kids do that and I mostly blame their parents, but adults damn well ought to know better.
I thought that being ugly and wrong is what teenage years were all about. I was certainly rocking that scene. I was bullied at school, but my emotions don’t seem to work normally, so I got a certain amount of protection from that. I mean, I could see what they were being mean about me, but then I thought they were all dicks, so it kind of cancelled out in my case.
I never hurt anyone or did anything to deserve the treatment I got, but I suppose since enough people think that things that are entirely out of my control mean I get what I deserve, I’ll shut up about it.
Kids are often mean or insensitive because they don’t know any better, but by the time we’re adults we’re supposed to know and act better.
Some names that people choose for their offspring do reflect their poor choices or lack of forethought, but that’s not the kids’ fault, and mocking them doesn’t accomplish anything.
Personally, I’m not a nice person, per se, but I pick and choose the times when I’m actively snarky to others… and when I do, it’s usually directed at some adult who has actually done or said something to earn my ire; it’s never over something as trivial as an unfortunate name.
I’m surprised that’s not some sort of company violation, actually.
The worst part of social media is how it’s allowed us to amplify this sort of bullying behavior and allowed us to distance ourselves and even feel justified in doing it.
It’s probably a violation, but it also seems to be one of those things that you shouldn’t have to tell people not to do. Or maybe not. Southwest was ignoring the mother’s complaint until she went to the media. Once the story got traction, THEN they were all “we take this very seriously.”
The woman evidently made a habit of taking pictures of passengers and posting them to her Facebook to mock them. Not sure if she was posting their names or just pictures.
I suspect her employment there is not long for this world if she hasn’t been terminated already.
Yeah. Apparently the rights of people to have a good laugh takes priority over making people feel accepted in our society… It should not be a surprise to me, but it always feels like a gut punch to be reminded of it.
But the woman who did it will likely only be disciplined (if they do at all) because it reflected badly on the airline, not because it hurt others. But I suppose that’s where we are in the world.
Just wondering why it seems to have become an unwritten rule that girls’ names have to end in an a.
(9 out of the top 10, and the tenth is an open vowel sound, too.)
Of less note, 5 out of 10 boys’ names end in n, and only 2 (3 if you count a badly pronounced Oliver) end in a open vowel sound.
No idea what this means, if indeed it means anything at all.
I used to see the admits for every newborn in the hospital that I worked at. I don’t think it’s a HIPAA violation to say that it’s amazing how varied spellings could be for common names like “Britney.” (Though it could be a HIPAA violation to give examples, since they could incredibly unique.)
I don’t have statistical basis for this, but I think that spelling variants are going to roughen the landscape for determining popular names by simple pluralities.
