Not being goady. Truly not.
But the row that kicked off in an earlier post about the names we give our children was...enlightening.
And whilst I’m not interested in replaying the name calling (...) or harshness, I am interested in the perspectives of the people who were posting. And in the intensity of feeling.
Of course the names of children offer onlookers insight into the background and preferences of the parents who give them.
Beyond appreciating the sound or historical/family significance of the names themselves, thinking about how people will internalise our children’s names almost necessarily plays a part in our decision to name them as we do.
Names are signposts — perhaps of taste, in our given spheres — or indications of what we find beautiful, or laudable.
Perhaps of background.
Or of culture.
And it’s a bit naive to think otherwise.
We agonise over naming our children for a reason. Or for many reasons.
But clearly the way we think about names is a function of class as much as it is a function of many other things — and class in this country is a pretty loaded subject.
So I ask: to what extent do you think names still have the power to incline us, at least at the outset, to put children into a particular bracket — and, perhaps more importantly, having been put into a particular bracket, to what extent does that placement impact we treat them?
Because that’s the really important part of the question, at least from my vantage point:
Not: what assumptions one might make about a child (or family) on the basis of a given name, but how those assumptions might impact how that child is treated in real time.