Oh, and there's this on the name business

...About the name business. There have been recent studies demonstrating the extent to which "black-sounding" names have become a liability in the job market. From experience, I suggest that any strange-sounding name, any name that demands that HR ask how to pronounce it, and above all, any name that HR's resume screening software can't handle, is a liability in the job market.

Take that, cutsey baby name vendors and buyers!

How do I know about this? Ever had a job coach suggest that you change your name to be competitive in the job market? I have.

I don't think the average Anglo has had that experience. But the higher up the search ladder an African-American reaches, or an Hispanic reaches, the more likely it is that they hear this expert advice.

So too, I think, it is with those descended from the "small peoples" around the fringes of Europe (and Asia). Of these, the Irish are the best-known. There are many others: some with their own nations, but all with their own languages. Americans know, or think they know, the Irish and Highland Scots. They barely know the Welsh. There are also Bretons, Basques, Suomi, Sami, and so on. And any of these who have names that don't fit the Anglo-Saxon template? Well, along with people of colour, they'll just have to change their names to get a job equal to their abilities.

Some--most--of my Welsh relations took names in Saesnaeg. In a fit of nationality, they gave me one that wasn't. And with all its disadvantages, I'm not changing it.

Feigning retreat in the name wars

So yes, yesterday's comment did have me pounding my head on the keyboard. As I ponder my teachable moment, I have to consider the several options the cited naming trend opens up.

The cool business of giving babies, of one of the principal genders, names connected with the other principal gender is very decidedly a one-way street. For instance, I doubt that my neighbour's daughter Ryan (a surname really, but never mind) will need to punch everyone's lights out to defend her name in grade school. If these people had a son, and named the child Jennifer, I guarantee that boy's fists would be busy from the moment he was able to stand. A Boy Named Sue was fiction. Until gender equality is real, giving girl babies boy names simply co-opts that name for the girls. The co-opted boy doesn't get tough. He gets fucked up, beaten up, or actually does die.

That's why a cute trend that enables gender-based bullying and youth suicide doesn't seem terribly cute to me, a person with an unusual name being steadily co-opted. Celebrities don't concern themselves with such details, because they don't seem to concern themselves with other human beings at all.

OK, I've lost this fight. I ain't quitting, as they say, but I've surrendered and I'm looking over my options.

Option 1. Move back to Wales, or New Zealand, or a few other parts of the former empire less afflicted with celebrititis, where the range of available names is wider than it is in the bible-toting US of A.

Option 2. Assimilate. (This is the preferred solution of the job-hunt gurus, by the way.) Go to court and change my name to Bryan-Byron-Byrne (I can toss a coin to choose). When I've done that, I should also adopt a red-blooded American nickname—say, Butch or Buzz— and use that on my resume.

Option 3 has the greatest appeal. If someone has been blessed with a gender-neutral or gender-ambiguous name, I think they should take that as licence to be gender-neutral or gender-ambiguous. Since adults are useless in such matters during one's formative years, the gender-ambiguous child may want to consider recruiting a bodyguard.

If celebrities take it upon themselves to enhance the ambiguity of your name, remember that celebrities are authority figures too, in their fatuous way. You must keep control of the situation and stay one step ahead of them

You might even parlay your gender neutral identity into a celebrity of your own. This would not be a cop-out, if you used your position to make gender equality something more than lip service. Only then would a name become just a name, and not an immutable signpost of gender identification.

See, it's a losing battle

One of the blessings of rarely watching TV is that I have to Google the idiots who are enshrined in the celebrity cultosphere. Finding my own name amongst the five favourite celebrity baby names of the year was only a slight surprise. Finding that the unfortunate infant is a cute baby girl saddled with a most masculine Welsh name was, after that, no surprise at all.

Once in a while, someone will gurgle to me about how a relation has named their daughter Bryn, or tried it on with a non-Celtic feminine suffix. (I'll get around to linking to a previous rant or two on the subject.) When I hear these gushings, I am not tactful, and the doting relation generally wanders off somewhat deflated.

As far as I can see, both these parents are a few floors short of a hotel. (Who are these people and what, if anything, do they do?) I wonder if they can pronounce the name correctly, and I do hope they avoid both Wales and New Zealand: one of the leading sports figures in the latter is a rugby bruiser who bears no resemblance to this little girl. But I may live long enough to hear news of her gender reassignment surgery.