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HughRistik comments on What's In A Name? - Less Wrong
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Comments (132)
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.
No, I intend to homeschool and to encourage my offspring not to waste their time on cruel and stupid people in general.
blink
If indeed those parents were homeschooling their child then I'd probably withdraw 88% of my objection to that particular name.
What's the other 12%, then?
High school and the initial years of college.
That was my answer too. Well, s/homeschool/unschool/ ?
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.
I didn't mention it because that doesn't seem to be HughRistik's point; it seemed like he was focusing on reducing bullying (plausible) rather than on eliminating it (implausible).
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.
Yes, parents have that responsibility. However, I don't consider encouraging or enforcing conformity to be the best way to protect children from the threat of bullying, any more than I consider it the best way to protect against assorted adult social ills like prejudice in its myriad forms. My first choice, as I noted elsewhere, is to control the setting so the threat is all but obviated. If that option weren't available to me (if I'd already had kids and then suffered financial disaster such that I could not educate them at home, having to work instead), I'd prefer consulting authorities (teachers, school administrators, other parents) to contain the threat in question, and sending my kid to jujitsu class if the threat were physical.
Names are important. I don't want to make a decision that important because I am afraid of the behavior of cruel and stupid children. I don't want my kid to ask "Mom, why did you name me Lisa Mary? There are six other Lisas on our street and one of them has the middle name Mary too!" and have to answer "well, I was afraid that if I called you Cimorene Joyce like I wanted to, the six other Lisas on the street would make catty remarks to you even more than they already do because you're an atheist vegetarian who needs glasses and prefers books to television and doesn't go around dressed in clothes that feature [insert next decade's pop culture celebrity]. Never mind that as Cimorene Joyce you could have gone by Joyce or C.J. or by, heck, Lisa if that struck your fancy."
Right, because naming my kid Lisa wouldn't pick my pocket or break my leg, it's not a significant sacrifice? A name that I will use many times a day and that everyone will know I picked shouldn't have to be one I like?
I do not share your value ordering.
Also, I can think of about six names that seem impossible to tease, and I'm sure with a little work, I could come up with schoolyard chants mocking those six names too.
To justify putting a child at increased risk of being teased or bullied, the reason had better be pretty damn good. I don't see the parents' name preferences, or the desire to flout prejudice with a child's name, as cutting it. Let's start with the issue of parents' preferences:
I fully agree that names are important to parents and that parents have a valid interest in choosing names for their children that they like.
Yet we can't just look at the parents' interests. What about the kid's interests? Remember, we are talking about potentially lasting psychological trauma. Even if we are only talking about a 5-10% difference in teasing and bullying, why would a parent want to make things any worse for their children just to satisfy their own creativity and self-expression? That sounds very selfish on the parent's part.
Btw, I don't see a problem with the name "Cimorene." I'm pretty sure I haven't argued for limiting childrens' names to the most generic, like "Lisa." As I've said, I'm not advocating against cool names or unusual names, I'm advocating against names with associations and permutations that lead to increased teasing. As you observe, it is possible make fun of any name, given enough thought; yet as I've also already pointed out, some names are easier to make fun of than others. Not all names are so vulnerable to teasing that we should just throw up our hands and treat them all as equally risky for children.
If parents really want to exercise their creativity, they should think up cool names that don't have obviously teaseable associations. Cimorene is fine; Vanyel is not. Would it really hurt parents to call their son "Vance" instead of "Vanyel" as much as it could potentially hurt the kid to be called Vanyel if one of his classmates discovers the reference? Remember, we are talking about the receiving homophobic slurs for years on end, which might have otherwise been avoided. From a utilitarian perspective, I don't think the math adds up. Maybe you think it does.
Next, let's examine the issue of conformity:
Conforming when choosing a name isn't the same thing as "encouraging" or "enforcing" conformity. Unless you think that it encourages conformity by example?
I generally don't support catering to conformity and prejudice, in a vacuum. Yet in this case, we have an additional concern: the child's welfare. Does the cost the parents bear by conforming (or to others who might follow their example) really justify putting their child at an elevated risk of psychological harm? If the point is to avoid teaching the child to conform, then can't the parents teach this lesson more directly?
Certainly the choice of a child's name isn't the "best" way of protecting a child from bullying; nobody is saying that it is. But it certainly helps. Choice of a child's name isn't the best way to fight conformity and prejudice, either. Parents shouldn't be sticking their children any farther out in the front lines of culture wars than necessary. If parents want to fight prejudice and teach their kids the virtues of opposing it, then they should take the kids to rallies. Parents can use kids to hold placards, but parents shouldn't use a kid's name as a placard.
You suggest other ways of protecting children. Great idea in principle, but homeschooling is the only idea you've suggested that I think will work in practice.
When I read this, I really have to wonder whether you've experienced any kind of extensive bullying. I could be wrong, but it doesn't sound like you know the ropes.
There is a limit to what the authorities can and will do. Authorities can verbally rebuke bullies or talk to their parents, but this is not guaranteed to result in a change lasting more than a few days/weeks. Authorities can't supervise everything all the time. There is plenty of psychological damage that bullies can do with chronic maltreament even if no isolated incident is enough to get them suspended or expelled. Verbal abuse especially is hard to monitor and discipline.
You can't assume that the child will necessarily speak up about everything. If the child is used to the way they are being treated, they might not realize that they deserve better.
As for the physical side, there is only so much that martial arts can do when there is big differences in size and aggressiveness between children. Jujitsu might help with grappling, but it's not so good against shoving and tripping, especially when they come from behind or in groups. A gentle kid who is not a natural athlete is going to get owned by bigger, aggressive bullies who hit puberty earlier, regardless of training. Furthermore, what if the kid doesn't want to do martial arts?
The only thing I've seen make serious bullies completely stop is (a) the bully getting older and maturing, or (b) the bully finding a juicier target. Probably the best way to protect a kid is to make sure he or she doesn't get targeted in the first place; consequently, picking a name that won't instead draw the radar of every bully in the school seems like a good idea. Because once the kid gets in the sights of serious and savvy bullies, there is not much that you or the authorities can do to completely stop the bullies from having their fun and slowly sucking the life out of your kid, every day, for years on end, short of waiting for the bullies to get tired of your kid, or taking your kid out of that situation.
I see, but I don't think your value ordering is based on the big picture taking into account the nature of bullying, perhaps because you don't have extensive experience with it (though maybe you do). I completely agree with valuing parents' name preferences and avoiding caving in to conformity, but I don't see a basis to believe that these concerns justify making one's child a bigger target for bullies. Sure, the kid could grow up and love their name and never get seriously bullied, but he or she could also get targeted by bullies early and get hit harder. Even if this higher variance of outcome from a radical name is not associated with a lower mean (it probably is), parents should be risk-averse towards outcome distributions that extend into the range of lasting psychological and social damage.
Parents conforming to prejudice and stowing their creative, radical, avante garde names for their children just doesn't hurt them, society, nor their children as much as increased bullying and teasing could hurt the children. I don't see the utilitarian math working out, unless the parents' name preferences are put above the children's welfare, the danger of bullying is underestimated, the differences in fertility to bullies of different names is underestimated, or the ability of children, parents and authorities to deal with bullying is overestimated.
And it bears repeating again: I am not against all cool, unusual, or even avant-garde names. I am not merely advocating generic names. I am arguing against names that will put children at an increased risk of being bullied or otherwise mistreated or not taken seriously.
I would revise this statement if I were you, to something like "to justify putting a child at increased risk of being teased or bullied, the reason had better be commensurate with the risk increase in question". For example, "I was in a hurry" isn't a "pretty damn good" reason to increase the odds of teasing/bullying for one's child, but it might - occasionally, anyway - be an adequate reason for not noticing that one's child has her shirt on backwards as she leaves the house in the morning.
Why are you assuming a kid - moreover, in particular, a kid of mine - wouldn't share my attitude about names, instead of yours, and agree with me about where to draw the line and how to make the tradeoff?
Why? Because you had already heard of the name "Vanyel" and knew how to expect it to be teased, whereas (I'm guessing) you've never read the Enchanted Forest Chronicles? I hadn't heard of Vanyel before; it just sounded like a cool name to me, and I had to look it up when Eliezer indicated it had baggage attached. What are the odds that the average elementary school kid who would be inclined to use homophobic slurs in the first place has read Vanyel's books?
I'm not a utilitarian. Or even a consequentialist.
I think it falls under the "enforcement" category pretty starkly. It's not unassailable enforcement - middle names and nicknames and, later, name changes are available - but whatever your parents name you is what you're going to be called, by everybody, all the time, at least until you're old enough and independent enough to divorce yourself from what's written on your birth certificate. And if they call you Lisa, they're making you - in a pretty significant way - like all the people who are already named Lisa, and declaring their allegiance (or at least shared preferences) with all the other people who have named children Lisa.
Children are notoriously inclined to obey example over instruction. I have very low confidence that quietly stifling various forms of self-expression while paying lip service to non-conformity will result in a cheerfully nonconformist child.
You have yet to address my comparison with selecting the race of children. If I wind up with a black or Asian or Hispanic or whatever spouse, my kids will be sorta brownish. This will inevitably embroil them in "culture wars"; it's a privilege of whites and whites alone to avoid that mess (in the United States).
I have never been physically attacked. However, up until high school (and, for some percentage of the cases, during high school), I generally found the authorities responsive to my various complaints about the non-assault behavior of others. It is possible that this has something to do with my being female and the pet of various school counselors as I grew up, so I shouldn't necessarily expect it to extend to my children.
I'm not sure what you're actually suggesting here, but it sounds like you think my children will either be exposed to bullying all over the place, perhaps including at home, and come to think of it as the normal behavior of others, or they won't be able to distinguish between kind and bullying behavior at all. While I suppose you have no reason to rule out the first and neither of us have reason to rule out the second, they don't seem likely enough to plan for.
How much of an increase, since names exist on a continuum of teasing likelihood? Cimorene Joyce is more likely to be teased about her name than Lisa Mary.
To add another facet to the discussion, how do you feel about last name choices? Perhaps you don't feel that surnames should be conjured up from scratch, but it's certainly not out of the question for me and my future spouse to choose between my and the spouse's preexisting names for the kids. If the choices were between something normal and dull, like Johnson, and something ripe for juvenile mockery, like Cox, would you hold that I'm (in utilitarian fashion) obliged to put "Johnson" on the kids' birth certificates?
My previous post acknowledges that a child could grow up and love the radical name they are given. And I already tried to address your point above with what I was saying about radical names causing a higher variance of outcome, meaning higher chances of positive results and higher chances of negative results. I'm just not much of a fan of high-risk, high-reward strategies in the domain of parenting.
Don't forget that elementary school children have older siblings, and that many schools are K-8. While the chances probably aren't very high, the consequences for the kid will be very high if someone finds out. Why play Russian Roulette with a child's social development?
Very well, I concede this point. I still see the costs of additional exposure to bullying to outweigh the cost of this sort of enforcement. Bullies will enforce a lot more than this on a kid who gets in their sights.
I agree that kids learn by example, but choice in the child's name is merely one form of the parents' self-expression. I'm sure there are plenty of other ways that parents can set nonconformist examples. See my previous comment about taking kids to rallies.
On the contrary, I did address this comparison when I said "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."
I think you are correct to be hesitant in expecting that authorities would easily deal with bullying towards a child of yours. In my case, authorities were able to stop the more physical bullying, but they were able to stop the verbal aspect for any length of time.
I don't think I suggested that I think your children would be exposed to bullying in the home, nor all over the place. To clarify, I am suggesting that if a child is getting bullied somewhere, it's not guaranteed that the child will speak up about it to their parents or to the authorities. There are many possible reasons: not wanting to make trouble, not wanting to be a tattle-tale, fear of reprisal, not wanting to look weak, speaking up in the past changed nothing, or being accustomed to the treatment.
It is not at all uncommon for abuse victims to suffer in silence. How likely this would be for a child of yours would depend mainly on the nature and degree of bullying, and the child's personality. Even though the majority of children do not receive this treatment, putting a child at a greater risk of it, or exacerbating that treatment if it is already happening, is sufficiently bad that it should be taken seriously. Just because there is a low chance of a certain bad outcome, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to avoid that outcome if the badness is bad enough (see my Russian Roulette analogy above). In your case, if you had children with Asperger's syndrome or Aspie traits, you would probably want to do as much as possible to protect them from bullying (which might be why you are considering homeschooling).
Again, since you haven't experienced extensive bullying, and you don't understand the potential difficulties with speaking up, you seem to be underestimating how bad bullying can get and how difficult it can be for both the authorities and the person involved to deal with it. I think if you had a more accurate picture of the risks involved, and how big the stakes are, parent's name desires would start to shrink in importance relative to protecting children from those risks (which may not be common, but which are severe), and you would be a bit more hesitant towards parents exposing their children to a greater risk of bullying.
Continuum, yes, but this continuum doesn't increase linearly. There are both quantitative and qualitative differences between the teasing that certain types of names may inspire. There is a massive different between the amount and type of teasing that a name like Cimorene would inspire, as opposed to Vanyel, because the latter will cause gay-baiting if its meaning is discovered. I'm not confident that merely unusual names taken from fantasy novels will lead to enough additional teasing to worry about. It's mainly names with associations or permutations that can be used in a demeaning way that I think parents should be cautious about. Vanyel associates a child with homosexuality, which is truly a scarlet letter for a young boy.
As names increase in teasibility, or types of teasibiity, I'm not sure exactly where parents should become worried, but some names definitely do cross that line, such as ones that inspire gay-baiting.
First, I haven't thought this through to point where I'm saying that parents are "obliged" to do anything. What I'm advocating is that when thinking up a name for their child, they should consider the consequences of that name, and the probability, goodness, and badness of those potential consequences. I suggest that if parents come up with a name, they think about whether that name might increase their child's exposure to bullying and teasing (which is potentially difficult to avoid, and difficult to stop once it starts), and if so, they ask themselves whether their need for self-expression and belief that the child will like that name really justifies putting their child at an additional risk.
Last names are a slightly different case, because changing them usually has additional consequences that will have to be weighed. If the situation is choosing between the last names of two spouses for the child, then the parents should indeed consider the impact of last names on the child. In this case, I do think that Johnson is safer than Cox.
Btw, is there any (first) name for a child that you would think is morally questionable for parents to stick on a child, or at least inadvisable? For instance, would you see a problem with parents naming a boy GayWussyPoopooBaby? If so, why?
Agreed - but is the message supposed to be "don't conform if you don't want to", or "don't conform unless not conforming is scary"?
You have not fully addressed this point at all! I can select the race of my spouse and therefore the race of my children without having to give up the chance to marry someone I love (given that I am not presently in love with anyone) simply by limiting my dating pool. It's pretty easy to tell by looking whether or not the potential children of me and some random guy would look white or not. I could simply not approach, or reject approaches from, anyone for whom the answer is "not". This might slow me down, but I'm pretty confident I will eventually find a spouse whether I do this or not. Kindly say whether or not you think, given that I eventually want children that are biologically mine and a future spouse's, and given that I will select the spouse from a dating pool I can restrict as I see fit based on any criteria I choose, that I should restrict said dating pool on the basis of race so my children will not be minorities.
While we are on the subject of uncomfortable comparisons, the fact that I want biological children that are mine and a spouse's limits my dating pool to men and transsexual women who had the foresight to visit a sperm bank. I have a transwoman ex-girlfriend who has expressed an interest in getting back together with me after we are out of school and more geographically convenient to each other; should I nix that idea because I can probably find a cisgendered male and if I do, my kids won't have two mommies?
Yes, there are some such first names. The one you propose is among them. This isn't because some kid named GayWussyPoopooBaby would be teased so much as because it indicates a flagrantly disrespectful attitude on the part of the parents towards their own child. If I thought that Vanyel's parents were homophobes and meant the name as a subtle dig at their offspring, I would object. By the same token, if "GayWussyPoopooBaby" meant something complimentary in a foreign language and that was genuinely the reasoning behind the name, I'd probably advise the parents to transliterate it differently ("Geiwusipoupoubebbi"?), and make sure they were informed of its significance in English nonetheless, but after that point I think it would be their choice.
I think I have, if you read that quote of mine again. I said "Parents have valid interests in marrying the person they love," not "Parents have valid interests in marrying a person they love." I do not consider potential spouses to be completely interchangeable. Consequently, parents can have a valid interest in marrying the particular person they are in love in with, even if that person is of a demographic that would lead their child to have a harder time with teasing.
No, because you have a valid interest in dating from an unrestricted pool, and not having your dating slowed down by excluding partners based on qualities that are arbitrary to your compatibility. Same principle with having kids with your ex-girlfriend: if she really is your optimal partner choice in your view, then you have a valid interest in having kids with her, even though kids with other partners would have safer childhoods.
Do you really think that a parent's choice of names for their child carries the same importance as the parent's unrestricted partner choice? I don't, and I would be surprised if you do. In my view, a parent's choice of a particular partner they consider optimal enough to have kids with, and a child's interest in not being put at extra risk of bullying, are both on a higher level of importance than a parent's choice of a creative name for the child.
I think it would be their choice, too. My question for you is whether there are names that you would have a moral problem with, or that you would think are inadvisable. If parents from a foreign country named their boy Geiwusipoupoubebbi (love your transliteration, btw!), fully knowing how it sounds in English, would you really have no problem with that, considering that the name alone is enough to make the kid's life hell at school from bullying, possibly causing social trauma and depression? Would you have advised against giving that name to the kid if the parents asked your opinion when considering names?
But you wouldn't consider the resulting teasing to lead to moral problems in giving that name? Why not?
I'm still trying to make sense of your justification of subjecting children to unnecessary abuse to satisfy the whims of the parents because the direct agents of the abuse are acting immorally (though predictably). If I'm mischaracterizing your justification, then please clarify what it is.
As far as I can tell, either you think that predictably subjecting a child to abuse at the hands of an immorally-acting agent is: 1. Not wrong, because all the injustice is due to the bullying agent. 2. Wrong, but outweighed by the parent's interests in choosing a name they like for their children, flouting convention, etc...
Or you have some other position that is either unarticulated or non-obvious to me. Which is it?
You're still evading the question. In order to find out whether any given prospective partner is someone I want to marry, I have to invest a lot of time in them. I can spend my twenties finding and investing time in, say, half a dozen people who meet my minimum initial standards whether or not those standards include "white male", and I don't have such a discerning nose for mate quality that I think excluding that criterion would let me be pickier about something important and have better odds of finding a really optimal spouse. Are you trying to say that you believe in soulmates or something equally freaky, such that restricting my dating pool one iota more than strikes my selfish whim might cost me my One True Love™? It certainly sounds like it - if you think that my investing time in the pursuit of Sorta Brownish Person A over White Person B is that important that you'll give me a green light to do so, and marry A if all goes well, even though I'll wind up with a Sorta Brownish Kid who might be the target of racism throughout his or her life, surely it must be profoundly important on the order of soulmate-hood for A. If that's the case, then you're outright rejecting my premise that I could find a satisfactory spouse given certain dating pool restrictions (e.g. if I restricted the pool to men or whites or both). I think I have an awfully high chance of winding up with a white male even if I don't narrow my dating pool at all, just because non-whites are called "minorities" for a reason and the same is true of lesbian/bisexual transwomen. It doesn't seem to me that I'd be giving up anything except my commitment to various non-consequentialist principles I care about by deliberately upping that chance to a near-certainty. Since "various non-consequentialist principles I care about" is exactly why I'd like to defend Vanyel's parents and the other parents of kids with unusual names, I want you to distinguish the two situations without resorting to the apparently magical words "valid interest in".
I'd probably advise against it on aesthetic grounds, since I don't think it sounds very nice, but not on the grounds you suggest. I'd probably call the child Wu (or a translation of whatever complimentary thing "Geiwusipoupoubebbi" means) for short and hope it stuck. I might advise homeschooling a little more enthusiastically with those parents than with others.
Because I'm not a consequentialist? The basics of my (unfinished, don't ask for too many details) ethical account are that something is wrong if it a) violates a right of a person or b) destroys something without an adequate reason. Naming a kid Geiwusipoupoubebbi, without using that name to signify an attitude of disrespect, does not seem to me to violate a right (although it may increase the odds of Wu being a victim of rights violations later) and it does not appear to destroy anything, with or without an adequate reason.
The abuse is not certain. The abuse isn't even genuinely evitable by the parents, just scalable on a limited basis. Wu and his imaginary alternate universe version Ted could both be teased exactly the same amount, if, say, Wu benefits from the expectations others have of people named Wu and is therefore better at math than Ted and can tutor a sixth-grader and obtain the sixth-grader's protection. Or if his closer connection to his parents' cultural heritage lets him give a really cool presentation at the third grade international festival. Or if having a wacky name gives him a convenient icebreaker throughout his life and he can win friends and influence people. Could Wu also hate his name and suffer for it? Sure. I acknowledge the possibility. But it's not an unbroken causal connection the way you seem to think it is.
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".
"Candace", surely? Candida is a genus of yeast.
Candace does appear to be far more common than Candida, but Candida broke the top 600 names in the 1930s. Even Candace is under that mark, now.
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.
I don't know what your cultural background might be, but for me to consider someone a prospective spouse, I would need to date him or her for quite some time; since I'm not polyamorously inclined, I'm never going to be concurrently presented with two people I'd consider prospective spouses (of any race). I'd have to explicitly restrict my dating pool to whites if I wanted to wind up with a white spouse.
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...