Middle name? Not much help
Once upon a time, there was a farmer in Georgetown, Mass., or someplace close by. His last name was Eliot. Because he enjoyed an alcoholic beverage or three, he apparently took to hanging out with the Irish in Haverhill. There he met an Irish mill girl and married her, thus becoming my maternal great-great (or some such) grandfather. I suppose he was then run out of his home town on a rail. Thus Eliot is my middle name.
This is gender-neutral all right: most surname-first names are. I could go by "B. Eliot" and once tried it on my resume. As much as people screw around with gender-neutral names, few women adopt the trick of initialising their first name.
No, the problem is the Yankees. You see, it's Eliot spelled the "right" way. What they mean by that is that the Eliots (think Samuel Eliot Morison) are supposed to be the ones with birth and breeding. All those Elliots and Elliotts are shabby impostors.
Anytime my middle name comes up in old-money Yankee company, they begin asking genealogical questions that I'm quite unable to answer. This offends them, and they begin to act as if my grandmother stole the name along with a few pieces of their family silver. That in turn annoys me, so I offer a short version of the story above, emphasizing the alcoholic part. None of that advances the networking in any positive way.
The Boston Brahmins and such truck have one trick that we should all adopt in the name of gender neutrality: giving their kids three surnames instead of a traditional first name and surname-derived middle names. It's very gender neutral, for one thing. It helps the Brahmins sort you out without the trouble of asking after gender: if you don't have the right set of names and can't account for the ones you have (like Eliot) then you're dirt anyway. Let's have everyone do that, using any surname they like. That will level the playing field and save prospective parents from thralldom to the cute baby name cultists.
@MA: I did check out Jezebel. The most hilarious comment was from the woman named Stacey (fine surname name) who found out she was sharing her name with a porn star. So she changed it to Bryn without, it seems, doing any homework. She was stunned when a Bryn turned up as the hero in a Harlequin romance. We would have more equality and diversity if more Americans learnt to do their homework about such things. Never mind: it provides the world with an unending source of laughingstocks.
This is gender-neutral all right: most surname-first names are. I could go by "B. Eliot" and once tried it on my resume. As much as people screw around with gender-neutral names, few women adopt the trick of initialising their first name.
No, the problem is the Yankees. You see, it's Eliot spelled the "right" way. What they mean by that is that the Eliots (think Samuel Eliot Morison) are supposed to be the ones with birth and breeding. All those Elliots and Elliotts are shabby impostors.
Anytime my middle name comes up in old-money Yankee company, they begin asking genealogical questions that I'm quite unable to answer. This offends them, and they begin to act as if my grandmother stole the name along with a few pieces of their family silver. That in turn annoys me, so I offer a short version of the story above, emphasizing the alcoholic part. None of that advances the networking in any positive way.
The Boston Brahmins and such truck have one trick that we should all adopt in the name of gender neutrality: giving their kids three surnames instead of a traditional first name and surname-derived middle names. It's very gender neutral, for one thing. It helps the Brahmins sort you out without the trouble of asking after gender: if you don't have the right set of names and can't account for the ones you have (like Eliot) then you're dirt anyway. Let's have everyone do that, using any surname they like. That will level the playing field and save prospective parents from thralldom to the cute baby name cultists.
@MA: I did check out Jezebel. The most hilarious comment was from the woman named Stacey (fine surname name) who found out she was sharing her name with a porn star. So she changed it to Bryn without, it seems, doing any homework. She was stunned when a Bryn turned up as the hero in a Harlequin romance. We would have more equality and diversity if more Americans learnt to do their homework about such things. Never mind: it provides the world with an unending source of laughingstocks.
Labels: baby names, gender equality, Jezebel
posted by Uncle | 12:56
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