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Z_M_Davis comments on What's In A Name? - Less Wrong
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Comments (132)
Seconding Alicorn. I haven't read the books, but one would imagine that there's more to this character than simply his being gay.
Sure. But it's a central plot point of his stories, nonetheless.
I think that if I would object to someone naming their daughter Utility, then it's fair enough to worry about someone naming their son Vanyel. Or Singularity Smith or Humanist Hugh. Names shouldn't mark children for their parents' politics. Change your own name if you want to make a statement like that.
And if they just really liked Vanyel the character... I'm sorry, but you've got to be realistic about what shows up on Google.
Invalid analogy. The name under discussion is Vanyel, not Downwithheteronormativity or Queer Quentin.
So one should not name one's child Elton, then, as a gay character shows up prominently in the search results?
Is being okay with homosexuality a matter of politics?
Sadly, it is now. Maybe in a hundred years, Eliezer will approve of Vanyel's name for children born at that time? Maybe if he'd lived a hundred years ago he'd have criticized people for naming children after characters of other races, or after characters who associated as equals with other races?
I'll say it again: It's not the job of parents to make that choice for children. If you want to grow up and then change your name, great! (We could use with a tradition of that anyway, so that people have a chance to outrun all the Internet posts they made before they were 21 years old.) But the job of parents choosing a name for their child is first and foremost to be concerned strictly about their children, as they will be as children and then as adults. Candy is a great name for a 4-year-old daughter, not so great for a future Board member of a Fortune 500 company. I'm glad my own parents didn't actually name me Luke Skywalker Yudkowsky, for example, or Hen3ry or any of the other cute names they considered. Or even Hari Seldon Yudkowsky - it probably wouldn't be a help to me in my life.
Children and their names shouldn't be pawns in that sort of game - even with the best possible motives and fighting the best possible battles.
"Luke S. Yudkowsky" doesn't seem particularly bizarre. Isn't it kind of traditional for people to be embarrassed about their middle name anyway? The others do have problems, though.
What choice? You don't seem to be advocating calling children "eldest son" or "second daughter" until they reach the age of majority and accept a name that reflects their adult personalities, so I don't think you mean that parents should not name their children. And every name carries with it a history and a connotation and a sound - even made-up collections of pretty syllables carry the "my parents made up my name, isn't that wacky" connotation. Which ones pass your threshold of not having the wrong connotation or history or sound? It can't be avoided entirely; should we, in your opinion, restrict ourselves to names that are X years old or have X existing popularity or that X% of randomly quizzed people think is a pretty normal name?
Indeed - I'm puzzled about what choice Eliezer meant. Eliezer seems to be advocating not naming your child anything that might be in any way weird, which causes me extreme cognitive dissonance when I consider that he thinks 'Eliezer' is okay.
I'm not sure avoiding mere weirdness is the point, the point is to avoid any name with associations or permutations that would make one's child easier to tease during childhood, or be taken less seriously during adulthood (e.g. "Candy"), or experience a higher risk of any other negative outcome.
As someone who has experienced childhood bullying, I'm glad that my name didn't give the bullies any additional ammo. If the bully is trying hard enough, they can make fun of just about any name, but some names are easier to make fun of than others.
The child having a positive outcome in the world (meaning the real world of the present, not the world that should be) is more important than parents' exercising their creativity, self-expression, or statement-making, political or otherwise. A child is not a vanity plate.
Tailoring a child's name to the proclivities of cruel and stupid children seems obviously unwarranted to me. The problem isn't the name. The problem is the cruel and stupid children. Tailoring a name to the common biases of normal adults is less obviously so, but since there is no real reason why we shouldn't have a high-powered businesswoman or a politician or whatever named Candy, I'm inclined to think that that's also a bad reason. Of course, I'm in favor of supplying middle names that are pretty run-of-the-mill for emergency backup; I know several people who go by their middle names, as a cheaper and simpler alternative to actually going through with a name change. If Candy doesn't like being Candy, she can grow up and call herself C. Eleanor or something.
There are so many parenting choices that would be ruled out by a strategy of denying bullies ammunition that it doesn't seem like a practical priority, even if it were one I agreed with. Should I choose a white spouse (or adopt white children), so my kids will be white and unlikely to be the target of race-based bullying? Should I wait until I'm willing and able to supply my offspring with expensive designer clothes, lest they otherwise be subject to the sneers of the better-dressed? Should I grit my teeth and raise my children Episcopalian so they have a nice mainstream inoffensive belief system that people are unlikely to tease them about? Or, for more easily implemented choices - should I feed them meat, in case the carnivore children next door think tofu is silly? Should I discourage them from acting well-informed in public because knowledge is often mocked? Should I get a TV and have it babysit them so they'll enter the world with an arsenal of popular culture trivia?
Data point: I have a very ordinary name. It's boring. I don't hate it enough to change it, but I wish my parents had named me something cooler.
Data point: I'm glad to have a "dull" first name (Paul). To me, it means that I've been handed a blank slate on which to write who I am, rather than finding that my parents have pre-filled it for me. And it's something my parents did very much on purpose.
Do you intend to rid the world of cruel and stupid children? If not, then this is the wrong protest for a parent to make.
You do realize what I think I ought to do before the world is safe enough for my children... oh, never mind.
Well said. Coolness is to be celebrated. And your comment about having white children is especially well-taken given Eliezer's comment about growing up to be president. Presumably, (at least before this year) one would be well-advised to avoid having anything but a white child if you want to leave that option open.
Also, you didn't mention it, but obviously none of those things will stop kids from being bullied. All you need in order to be punched in the face is a face. (And kids without faces will likely be bullied too)
I really don't get the Candy thing, but maybe that's because I've only ever known older women named Candy.
Why does it seem so unwarranted? The problem is with the cruel and stupid children, yes, but they are still a factor in how one's children are treated. Don't parents still have some sort of responsibility to protect their children from threats, even ones that shouldn't exist in an ideal world?
I agree with Eliezer that in your case, home-schooling will remove a lot of the problem.
I agree that parents cannot always completely deny bullies ammunition, but they should avoid granting bullies ammunition that doesn't require any tangible sacrifice on their part.
All parenting choices are not created equal. Some parenting choices, like many of the examples you give, have some real rationale behind them that outweighs their possible negative impact on the child. Parents have valid interests in marrying the person they love, in raising their children to share their religion and diet, and in choosing their children's clothes and TV time. These concerns justify increasing the risk of their children getting teased, while the parents' mere self-expression does not.
It's much better to having a boring name than to get teased because your parents got a little too creative. And I'm not talking about parents avoiding any kind of cool names, I'm just advocating avoiding names that will increase the chances of their kids getting teased.
Also, I like ciphergoth's comment about the benefits of giving children a name that functions as a blank slate for their identities, rather than saddle the kid with the parents' self-expression that the kid might grow up to dislike.
Or "Candida", which is likely what her full name would be anyway if "her parents named her 'Candy'", and doesn't have the same connotations as "Candy".
Given two prospective spouses, each with the exact level of physical and personal attractiveness, but one is white and the other black - I would start factoring in race related issues in my decision making.
Well said. Yes, they should have put VANYEL on their vanity plate, not their kid.
Any talk about positive outcomes refers to a world which should be; positive is in your utility function, not in the territory. There is much more to life than happiness and popularity. For myself, I would rather be unhappy and an outcast than bludgeoned into conformity. Maybe Vanyel cherishes his name and his history, and would despise his counterfactual analogue who had been named Mike. You can't say it would be doing a service to Vanyel to have named him Mike, for if the child had been named Mike, he would have a different childhood and our Vanyel wouldn't exist. The most you can say is that it's better to create a Mike than a Vanyel, because Mike is likely to be happier.
All parents try to raise their children with their values. All parents implicitly make some sort of statement by how they raise their children: if we're going to be talking about statements, then "Christian" is far more egregious than "Vanyel." The question is not whether the parents are going to send a message, the question is whether mainstream messages and unusual messages are of equal moral legitimacy. If you're going to say "No, because children whose parents are sending unusual messages are more likely to be unhappy, and I don't want children to be unhappy, even if it means crushing minority subcultures," fine. Give in to the bullies honestly and explicitly, but don't pretend that sneers about vanity plates don't apply just as well to Christian's parents.
Actually, given how often (anecdotally speaking) children named Christian turn out atheist, that may indeed be giving them a positive outcome...
If I ever have a daughter, I want to name her Flonne.
Has it occurred to you that a daughter only spends a certain number of years being cute, and then wants to grow up and possibly be President?
I'm pretty sure the grandparent is not serious, given CronoDAS's stated plan of living in his parents' house until they die and then comitting suicide.
Well, I'm half-joking, half-serious. I don't expect to have a daughter any time soon, so it's mostly just a little bit of fantasizing. I can't picture the name as being a barrier to anything, but I'll take your word for it. I really do adore the character, though. It's not because Flonne looks cute, it's because Flonne is kind, caring, and cheerful, the kind of person you'd want with you when things aren't going so well.
I wouldn't try to name a son Laharl, though.
I don't put a very high probability on my actually carrying out that plan; I give at least a 9 out of 10 chance that something is going to send my life in a different direction before my parents both kick the bucket. I do, however, plan on staying in this house for as long as I can. I like this house!