At the moment #blackpeoplenames is trending on Twitter. Not so long ago #whitepeoplenames was trending.
Mass trending topics are a good reminder that there are a lot of teenagers on Twitter. Digging deep into them reminds me of all the stuff I didn’t like about high school – but I digress.
One comment that kept repeating for #whitepeoplenames was “Any name that you can find on those key chains” and for #blackpeoplenames “Any name that you can’t find on those key chains”.
I remember as a kid going up to those bookmarks and key chains and hoping I’d find my name. I never did, but each time I hoped and each time that familiar disappointment kicked in. I wasn’t alone – I had a friend who had a common name spelled in an uncommon way, she never found her name spelled properly either.
The world isn’t perfect, and never will be, but I do wonder what that does to children. You’re told from a very young age by commerce (which seems like the world at that age) that your name is weird. Parents say unique, kids at school say dumb. I was lucky – mine was different but sounded mainstream enough that I rarely got teased for my name. (In fact the only rhyme that one of my third grade classmates could find for it was lasagna, which apparently wasn’t any fun because he never repeated it.)
But what about those kids with names that are more different than most of their classmates’ names? Or children named after a celebrated relative or whose name can identify them as the sixth generation of their family? Not to say that parents shouldn’t name their kids whatever they want (I have every intention of inflicting a family name on one of my future children that my mother would rather I didn’t), but I do think parents should at least consider what they are doing. What privileges are you giving to your child, or taking away from your child, by the name that they are given?
Each person makes of their name what they will (some people I’ve known with some names make me dislike the name…until I meet someone else with the same name who is wonderful) but some names are mountains to climb. The least a parent who blesses their child with Mt Everest can do is also teach the child how to hike.
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Privilege is still on my mind, so there may be another one of these to come…