Am I being a snowflake about this - name of a nursery that is similar to something I find offensive ?

[Putoffalot]

AIBU to not want to send my child (of a mixed heritage) to a childminder with a name that is very similar to something offensive (GW). It’s come up when searching and is the closest to my work but I can’t even contemplate contacting them as it’s too close to the name of an offensive item ?

An extremely offensive word for a black person rhymes with moon.

Will you be avoiding looking out of the window of a night?

Thirded. People naturally shorten things so can see it becoming more inappropriate.

There's literally millions of words, so they could have chosen lots of other nice names.

The etymology is irrelevant. It’s how it appears, and how this reflects on those who have agreed on that name.

It’s an odd name for a nursery. And not a word I’d ever heard before in any context. It’s not exactly a normal everyday word, is it?

Why not just call the nursery tadpoles instead of an obscure term for tadpoles that sounds uncomfortably similar to a racist term?

I can see why you’d feel uncomfortable sending a mixed race child to a nursery with that name.

I consider myself to be reasonably well-educated, and I'd never heard the term "polliwog". Without knowing that it would have given me pause when looking for childcare!

Please follow this advice, OP. As a white woman, I don't have cause for the the same punch-in-the-guts feeling about this which has come for you.

I've googled it and no, you are not being unreasonable. I can't imagine what is behind the choice of name but if it's been called this for years, then it's long over due to be dropped.

Pollywogs
Edit to add: I see I'm late on this one.

I am Black and can confidently none of my Black friends would send their child to an establishment with the name ‘wog’ in it. It is on a par with the N word. I really don’t care if it means tadpole or whatever in another country. It’s offensive to Black people.

Obviously a business owner can name their enterprise however they see fit but can white people on this thread stop telling Black people how we can or cannot feeling about a racist word. If you think the word is fine, great. You crack on. But you don’t get to police how we feel about it.

In Miracle on 34th Street one of the children asks for a Peter Polliwog frog doll.
My Granny used to take us out with jam jars looking for polliwogs and spawn.
I'm quite embarrassed that I had never even noticed the rhyme.

I would also feel uncomfortable. As PP are saying, it obviously doesn't mean the same thing but anyone with an ounce of cultural awareness would never have called their nursery that, because of their similarity. I would not trust that a mixed heritage child would be safe there.

I'm white and I agree with you op. It's not a common name for tadpoles as people are trying to make out. It feels almost like what can they get away with. Who now would name their business something that rhymes with an outdated and offensive term? When there are so many other options like erm Tadpoles?

Yanbu - even now it’s explained I can see that would make you uncomfortable.

I would feel the same way. It's a strange choice of name even if it has a different meaning. Presumably there are other options - go somewhere else

YANBU at all and I'm amazed that people don't see that. It contains the word "wog"!

Honestly, fuck you.

This is Poliwag. A tadpole pokemon so named because of Polliwog
It's not that uncommon

Eh? The two things are completely unconnected. Eenie meenie has dreadful origins I agree and nowadays rightly we say ‘catch a tiger’ but it has nothing to do with AA Milne’s character, whose name happens to rhyme with the same highly offensive word.

Best stop my kids going to Little Ducks. It rhymes with a swear word. What will people think of me.

All sounds a bit like a when a well known TV programme caused people to campaign to drive filthy paediatricians out of their communities....

I have never liked the word, for the same reason as you, YANBU.

It's a thinly veiled "fuck you" because it's so obviously offensive

You genuinely think the nursery owner named her business with the express intention of insulting Black people by proxy to another word that helpfully also means “young creatures”?

I'd never heard of that before

Really don't think they've thought it through,

It's not a good name

Yes people are saying it’s just rhyming but part of it is exactly the same .

And it's not hard to Google