dying with laughter over this name

[ButtonMoon88]

I hate being bitchy over names but this has to be a joke, it's too good not to share!

A friend of a friend is a midwife and over the weekend whilst she was working, apparently a family named their little girl VaGina.

I think you're misunderstanding. We're not talking about a silly name like Pixie-Dust, we're talking about a name like VaGina, or Chlymidia. Which is where the "you're so stupid you can neither pick a good name OR understand that you have picked a word meaning genitals or whatever".
Neither are we talking about individual dislike of names, but an actual meme.
So your post is quite irrelevant, Gaspode.

No, I'm not misunderstanding. 'Picking a stupid name' covers many situations, including what the OP believe had happened, ie that a newborn was going to be given a name which is also an anatomical term. The implication was that the parents were too stupid to know this. I see that as exactly comparable to cases where parents are considering calling a child Ceasar (sic) - ie they don't know how to spell and haven't asked someone they trust who can spell to check it for them. Or they want to call their child Adolf and don't know or haven't thought about what the assocations would be. Or they pick a random English word they like the sound of, e.g. Buffoon or Caramel, and decide to use that - and don't come from a culture where that is a normal thing to do.

There is still absolutely no implication from the situation itself that only non-native English speakers will do this. On MN my impression is that most of the parents criticised for making these naming choices are actually white working class and poorly educated.

I'm a FB refusenik, so I have no idea about Britain First circulating 'stupid immigrants and the names they give their children apocrypha', but the Snopes entry on this is illuminating on the racial subtext to American versions of this fairly elderly urban myth. This is the whole entry, with examples and commentary.

Legend: An African-American woman christens her baby with a name based on an embarrassing medical term or bodily part after overhearing one of the nurses use the word.

Examples:

[Case, 1917]

*A young woman in Central Park overheard an old negress call to a pickaninny: "Come heah, Exy, Exy!"

"Excuse me, but that's a queer name for a baby, aunty?"

"Dat ain't her full name," explained the old woman with pride; "dat's jes' de pet name I calls for short. Dat child got a mighty grand name. Her ma picked it out in a medicine book — yessum, de child's full name is Eczema."*

[Pezzi, 1998]

*Betty had just given birth to a daughter, and she was discussing the choice of a name with her roommate, who was equally clueless. Mulling over the possibilities, Betty considered a word that she'd recently heard on the obstetric ward. "Vagina, that be a nice name . . . hmm, I think I'll call her 'Vagina.'" Admittedly a euphonious word, the two women agreed that "Vagina" would indeed be a nice name for a girl.

When the time came to relay the name choice to one of the hospital's personnel, the shocked worker exclaimed, "Uh, you can't name her 'Vagina'!" To which the Mom replied, "I be her mother, and I can name her whatever I wants to!" This prompted the worker to explain just what a vagina was, but the Mom was skeptical. "That ain't a vagina — it's a cootchie!"*

[Collected via e-mail, 2004]

*This young woman brought her child into Children's Hospital for a routine check-up. On the records, the nurse saw that the child's first name was Urine (pronounced Urin-ie). Not wanting to be rude, but wanting to know why this woman would name her child this, the nurse asked her how Urine got her name.

The woman explained, "Well, my baby was born premature and had to stay in the special nursery. She was real sick and they didn't know if she would make it. I couldn't decide what to name her, but the nurses said they would pray for her. One day I came in and the nurses had already named her. There was this paper on her incubator that said 'Please save Urine', so I knew that they had named my baby."*

Origins: Apologies for the offensive language in the first example. The quote comes from 1917, a time when racist humor was the norm. It stands not only as an early example of the legend, but also as an eloquent expression of the racist message which underpins it. Accept it as a graphic example of what this legend is really about.

Before delving into the legend itself, an entire category of "funny names" has to be dismissed. Key to the legend is the belief that the parents acted unknowingly in bestowing an embarrassing name on the young 'un. Unusual names are not in themselves folkloric; what makes them so are the perceived motivations of the parents.

There's nothing folkloric about a child christened Female (pronounced fuh-MALL-ee) if the parents understood full well what they were doing when they ponied up with the name. A classic example of non-folkloric use is found in the 1981 movie pilot of the TV series Cagney & Lacey. A prostitute gives her name to the desk sergeant but, as he's not familiar with fuh-MALL-ee, he asks her to spell it. "F-E-M-A-L-E," she offers. "That's Female," he says in disbelief. "Yeah, well my parents had twelve kids," responds the woman. "By the time they got to me they'd run out of names."

A properly folkloric version of the fuh-MALL-ee tale would have it that the parents saw the "name" on the baby's bracelet. Not being able to read well, they sounded it out badly, it fell on their ears prettily, and thus Baby was named. Alternatively, they interpreted what was written on the bracelet as the hospital having already named their child and the matter now being out of their hands.

Real-life fuh-MALL-ees are beside the point; what matters is how they came by the name.

As the 1917 example shows, this legend has been around for dogs' years. It now exists in two slightly different forms — the parents either misread a word, coming up with an unusual but pleasant-sounding pronunciation of same, or a member of the medical staff is overheard to properly pronounce the word, the parents think it pretty, and thus choose to stick the youngster with it.

*Names reported to have resulted from misinterpretations of the written word: Asshole (ah-SHOL-ee)
Clitoris (cla-TORE-us)
Enamel (EE-na-mull)
Female (fuh-MALL-ee)
Gonorrhea (gu-NO-ree-ah)
Lemon Jello (le-MON-juh-lo)
No Smoking (NAWS-mo king)
Orange Jello (or-AN-juh-lo)
Pajama (PAH-ja-mah)
Shithead (shaw-THAYD)
Syphilis (suh-PHYL-lis)
Testicles (TESS-tic-clees)
Urine (u-RIN-ee)
Vagina (va-GEE-na)
Names reported to have resulted from overhearing an unusual but flowery-sounding term: Chlamydia (kla-MID-e-ah)
Eczema (EX-suh-ma)
Latrine (la-TREEN)
Meconium (muh-CONE-knee-um)
Placenta (pla-SENT-a)
Urea (YUR-ee-ah)
Vagina (va-JAI-na)
Either way, the tale swings on the fictitious parents' lack of education and how this leads them to choose a totally unsuitable name.

This legend is not strictly told of African-Americans; white Southerners are also sometimes cast in the starring role.

Examining the 1917 example again, the proud Black grandmother and her daughter are seen as attempting to exceed their presumed place and are punished for this act. Rather than stick to her own, the daughter has chosen an important-sounding name for her child. Her "uppityness" is duly rewarded by the joke being on her and her family.

Legend of the "kid named Eczema" ilk attempt to reinforce belief in the rightness of racism or regionalism. Just as parables were used in the Bible to communicate in a simple-to-understand form a behavior thought worthy of emulation, racist legends try to drive home the point that the looked-down-upon group is inherently inferior. Presenting the moral in the form of a story makes it easier to absorb.

Racism and/or regionalism play a part in a number of legends. (See our Password page for another such representative tale.) The more stories like these are told, the more the message of them is worked into the fabric of the people exposed to them. Hearing the "kid named Eczema" story again and again makes it that much more easy to think of Blacks as less intelligent.

Was there ever a mother so stupid as to name her kid Eczema without realizing what the name meant? Probably not. But because the story fits in with what's already believed about the shortcomings of whichever group the mother is supposedly part of, the tale will be re-told and believed anew.

Sister called Foof, brother called Peen.

Never will I believe this... Not in 100 million years x

Of course the implication is there, because of the history of this trope. Obviously

Wow. 98 years

Thanks Viola; 'meme' was the word I couldn't remember. It was driving me mad

I actually don't think there's an implication of 'immigrant' by the way this urban myth is told in the UK, I'd agree it's as likely to be the white working class's perceived stupidity being mocked as any racial group - I think that it maps as racist in the US and class-ist in the UK. Which must say something about the two countries and who are perceived to be the low-status groups in each.

Though worth pointing out the current thread on a baby being named Treylon, where, amidst comments about the parents' presumed 'gangsta chic', one commenter said it was a 'trailer trash' name, and another said she assumed Treylon's parents were black.

And I do think that the La-a urban myth, when told in a UK context (it's shown up on Mn regularly since I've been here) presupposes that La-a is black, or has a black parent.

Ffs, the op posted a light hearted thread and as usual there are always a couple who look far too deep into it.

I actually don't think there's an implication of 'immigrant' by the way this urban myth is told in the UK, I'd agree it's as likely to be the white working class's perceived stupidity being mocked as any racial group - I think that it maps as racist in the US and class-ist in the UK. Which must say something about the two countries and who are perceived to be the low-status groups in each.

Cavaradossi, thank you, that is exactly what I meant.

That doesn't actually make it any better: oh we're not being racist, we're just being classist. It's an entirely different set of people we are looking down on and laughing at, its poor people not black people. Although some of them might be immigrants as well, obviously......

Of course it doesn't make it any better. But it still doesn't mean that the original remark was meant to be racist.

Honestly some times the lack of humour on here really is hilarious. I sorry but it is. Op starts what she thought would be and I don't doubt intended to be a lighthearted thread and next second. It's getting compared to racism. The name Va Gina is funny. No matter who had the name. HTF is racist to find a name funny.

Absolutely, Ghost

The lack of humour is the op, not in the replies.

You have made this up dear op and your 2 year oldish attempt to generate a laugh has colossallyfailed.

Not true focus but I've taken a beating, lesson learnt!

I believe you OP!
Had a glass of mind so likely to believe anything...
BUT, you've had a hard time. Don't sweat it, tis the way of MN. It's like a box of chocolate's never know what you're gonna get! usually a telling off

God almighty, some people on here need to lighten up

The OP has been compared to Britain First? (In multiple posts by the same person ) Jeez. I have clearly missed something. Also calling her a gullible fool - nice.

Thanks for the giggle OP

I don't think she has, no. She was unaware of the connotations of the post.

As for "lighten up" and the shitz n giggles..its a well known racist/pejorative/insulting meme. Some of us don't find that very funny, and some of us challenge this kind of lazy insulting "humour".
You don't have to, but please don't tell us to lighten up.

No one has compared her to BF. As Viola said, she passed on in good faith an anecdote that is in fact an ancient urban myth that has nasty racial/class connotations she was unaware of. Not her fault, but in her position, I would rather someone pointed it out.

We've possibly all done something similar at some point. I had no idea that 'spook' was a US racial slur until I innocently asked an American friend why the UK TV series 'Spooks' was called 'MI5' when it was released in the US.

To be honest I'm astounded at the racial connotations that have since been pointed out to me, this thread has actually shocked and upset me so much I asked it to be deleted but mnhq told me they wouldn't.

I feel like a prize idiot and won't ever be repeating any silly anecdotes, on here! I am hiding this thread now thanks

I wouldn't worry about it Button. IT's not a big deal, you didn't know and its nothing, realy.

Don't worry about it, Button.

People will always find something to be complete twats about. It makes them feel superior.

It is perfectly normal to have Vagina on the BC as its a Russian female surname (Вагина), with the the stress on the first syllable. Man's surname will be Vagin(Вагин). I used to work with Mrs Vagina, and our American colleague nearly pissed himself with laughter.