# Stop calling her 'pumpkin' please **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 20, 2007, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856 "2007-09-20T09:23:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2007, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/41 "2007-09-20T23:24:44Z")
[QUOTE=Khadaji] I’m not familiar with children’s clothing. Is there some sort of racist nonsense with wearing this type of clothing that I am not aware of? [/QUOTE] Nope; it’s just a kids clothing store. I’m not sure what the US equivalent would be: it’s good quality stuff, a cut or so above the department store kids stuff, a little pricey, fashionable among ballet mums, and a shade too trendy for my liking, but no racist connotations whatever. [Here’s their website](http://www.pumpkinpatch.co.nz). Nor does “pumpkin” have any negative connotations in this part of the world: it was just a cute nickname they picked for the kid when they didn’t know what to call her. End of story. It seems to me there’s enough to get pissed off about in this story without looking for reasons to get offended. ---
**Author:** ![NinetyWt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/cc9497/32.png) [@NinetyWt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinetyWt)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2007, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/42 "2007-09-20T23:38:14Z")
> [@blinkingblinking](#): > > What I am saying is that it seems racist to keep calling her ‘pumpkin’ days after her real name is known. If the little girl was not of Chinese ancestry, I cannot see this happening. I belive that was covered in Post #3: [QUOTE=MerryMagdalen] FWIW in the US it’s common for news sources to continue referring to an abandoned/dead child by the original name the police called her, for continuity of coverage. For instance, the case of [Precious Doe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precious_Doe) where the child is still referred to by that name in most sources that I’ve seen, even though she’s been ID’ed. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2007, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/43 "2007-09-20T23:46:44Z")
[QUOTE=Marley23] Hey, you should feel lucky- you haven’t seen his material. It’s pretty awful. [/QUOTE] Yeah; the sad part for me is I was barely aware of that slur and now he brought it to the forefront again. But I guess me saying he’s an asshole for using all these slurs and exploiting stereotypes makes me ..uncool?? ---
**Author:** ![maggenpye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2007, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/44 "2007-09-21T00:01:31Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] I’m not sure that I see the outrage (or annoyance). (My experience is entirely with the print media, so the electronic folks might be doing something different that is more annoying.) Every citation that have seen to “Pumpkin” since she has been identified has used the name only in the title of the piece, referring to her as Qian Xue Xue within the text of the articles. It would appear that the name “Pumpkin” is only being used for continuity from day to day to allow the stories to be linked, both in the minds of the readership and in internet searches. If they refused to recognize her name, I could see an issue, (and perhaps radio and TV are doing that), but I see no problem–and certainly no insult–in referring to her _in headlines only_ in a way that allows casual scans of a paper or electronic seaches of articles tie together all the separate stories. [/QUOTE] Fair comment. And since the media here are now playing segments of the interviews that contradict the segments they played last night, I’ll have to say -I don’t know what’s happening. I’m respectfully withdrawing from this debate and getting on with my day. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2007, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/45 "2007-09-21T00:25:23Z")
Pumpkin is not a slur; I think **blinkingblinking** is trying to say that the media would not have continued to call her Pumpkin if her given name had been an English name. He could be right too, but I don’t mind the continued use of the nickname Pumpkin. It makes it very easy to identify news stories about the child as few other pumpkins are making headline news at the moment. True, Qian would also be a unique name in the headline but it’s a Chinese name that I’m unfamiliar with and as such I don’t find it as memorable or eye-catching. Yes, that’s probably racist of me but there you have it. I hadn’t heard that her English name was Claire until I read this thread. I could remember Claire more easily than Qian, but would still find Pumpkin more immediately relevant in a headline. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2007, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/46 "2007-09-21T00:31:38Z")
[QUOTE=Cazzle] Pumpkin is not a slur; I think **blinkingblinking** is trying to say that the media would not have continued to call her Pumpkin if her given name had been an English name. He could be right too, but I don’t mind the continued use of the nickname Pumpkin. [/QUOTE] As has been pointed out twice (and can be easily confirmed with a quick search on Google), the same thing happened with “Precious Doe.” If you drop “Erica Green” into Google, the first hits you get are to stories headlined “Precious Doe” and then there is a Google redirect to search on “Precious Doe.” Once the name is familiar to the public, that is the name used in subsequent headlines, even when the stories use the person’s real name. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2007, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/47 "2007-09-21T01:36:10Z")
[QUOTE=Marley23] Hey, you should feel lucky- you haven’t seen his material. It’s pretty awful. [/QUOTE] And I’ve heard lots of claims that he’s stolen material. Anyway, I’m always amazed what people claim are slurs. I’m willing to bet that I’ve never heard of 75%+ of them. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2007, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/48 "2007-09-21T01:42:30Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] As has been pointed out twice (and can be easily confirmed with a quick search on Google), the same thing happened with “Precious Doe.” If you drop “Erica Green” into Google, the first hits you get are to stories headlined “Precious Doe” and then there is a Google redirect to search on “Precious Doe.” Once the name is familiar to the public, that is the name used in subsequent headlines, even when the stories use the person’s real name. [/QUOTE] Precious Doe was a different situation though: A lot of time elapsed between the body being found and the child being identified. By the time people learned Erica Green’s real name, they had known her as Precious Doe for four years. Qian/Claire/Pumpkin, by contrast, was unidentified for roughly 24 hours - maybe less. Qian is also a living child, not a corpse. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2007, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/49 "2007-09-21T01:48:11Z")
It’s a term of endearment where I come from. I called my son pumpkin. I call lots of kids pumpkin. Or ‘little punky face.’ I don’t see racism in it at all. ---
**Author:** ![Junior\_Spaceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Junior\_Spaceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Junior_Spaceman)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2007, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/50 "2007-09-21T02:28:34Z")
I was going to start a thread on something like this, but more on the grounds that I hate using ‘cutesy’ names for children in newscasts, rather than the racial angle. Aside from that, this story is absolutely unique at the moment (or for all time, in Melbourne, so far as I can remember), so I don’t know why you even _need_ a hook like ‘Pumpkin’ to remind people that it’s _this_ girl who was abandoned at a city train station by her father allegedly after he murdered the girl’s mother and then hot footed it off to LA. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2007, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/51 "2007-09-21T04:50:50Z")
[QUOTE=Junior Spaceman] I was going to start a thread on something like this, but more on the grounds that I hate using ‘cutesy’ names for children in newscasts, rather than the racial angle. Aside from that, this story is **absolutely unique** at the moment… [/QUOTE] Inevitable nitpick: Something is either unique, or it isn’t. There are no gradations of uniqueness. ---
**Author:** ![Mehitabel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mehitabel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mehitabel)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2007, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/52 "2007-09-21T04:54:33Z")
Al Bundy used to call his daughter Kelly “pumpkin” too. It’s a little juvenile, maybe, but not racist. ---
**Author:** ![Junior\_Spaceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Junior\_Spaceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Junior_Spaceman)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2007, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/53 "2007-09-21T06:25:26Z")
[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir] Inevitable nitpick: Something is either unique, or it isn’t. There are no gradations of uniqueness. [/QUOTE] Yes, but in this case, it’s even more so 😉 ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2007, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/54 "2007-09-21T13:42:02Z")
There’s Baby Jessica who was in a well in the US. That count? ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2007, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/55 "2007-09-21T14:53:47Z")
[QUOTE=Junior Spaceman] Yes, but in this case, it’s even more so 😉 [/QUOTE] When you’re right, you’re _really_ right! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Gretchen\_Ross](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/da6949/32.png) [@Gretchen\_Ross](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gretchen_Ross)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2007, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/56 "2007-09-21T20:25:06Z")
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath] There’s Baby Jessica who was in a well in the US. That count? [/QUOTE] I think it counts! The fact that they’re still calling her Pumpkin isn’t racist…it’s just an angle to the story (as other people here have said) and will help others remember the case. If all of a sudden the headlines started stating the child’s name, no one would probably care to read it. But because they maybe have invested themselves in this “Pumpkin” case, now they will. And that’s just how it was with the baby Jessica case here. ---
**Author:** ![lynne-42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lynne-42/32/3138_2.png) [@lynne-42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynne-42)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2007, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/57 "2007-09-22T11:51:47Z")
**Keep calling her Pumpkin, please.** There’s nothing racist - everyone here has fallen in love with this child. This is a little girl who has a right to privacy. She will almost certainly return to NZ or Australia at some stage, even though it looks likely she will be brought up in China. When she does, even if it is just for a visit, it should be up to her alone whether she is identified as herself or by the horrors of her past. She apparently witnessed her mother being killed. Can you imagine if her real name became so familiar that every time she met someone they said ‘Are you THE …?’ and she was reminded of it all yet again? Maybe it should become law that children are addressed by nicknames only in the media. We have no right to know their real names. Just leave Pumpkin as a cute little child who was nicknamed with affection by those who found her. And let the real child grow up with anonymity if at all possible. ---
**Author:** ![RedRosesForMe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/91b2a8/32.png) [@RedRosesForMe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedRosesForMe)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2007, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/58 "2007-09-22T19:31:51Z")
I agree with the numerous posters who see no racism and aren’t annoyed by referring to Qian as Pumpkin. Yes, her real name was quickly discovered, so there weren’t weeks, months, or years of reports referring to her as Pumpkin. The media could have switched to her given name with nary a problem. Well, I do see a bit of a problem, and it is race/ethnicity related. Qian Xun Xue is hard to spell and hard to pronounce. Someone who’d heard the reports of Pumpkin might hear on the radio driving home from work that her name is actually Qian. They want to learn more, so when they get home they try to google it or find the story on CNN or the BBC. But they can’t spell it, and probably wouldn’t recognize Qian Xun Xue as being the name they heard on the radio (here I willingly admit my ignorance of Chinese. Qian Xun Xue does not sound like anything in my head, I just see the words because I have no idea how to pronounce that) I think it would be the same for a blond, blue-eyed girl named Euphrosina Bagdasarian. Hard to remember, hard to spell, hard to pronounce. The media want you following their stories, and if they think you won’t realize that Princess = Euphrosina, or Pumpkin = Qian, well… They’re trying to capture the imagination of Joe Sixpack, who might find such exotic names annoying, or frightening, or less sympathetic than something more familiar. I do know that her English name was Claire, but perhaps the media doesn’t find Claire as captivating as Pumpkin. Doesn’t tug at the heartstrings quite the same. I also like **lynne** ’s suggestion of using these nicknames to allow the children who survive such traumatic experiences a little anonymity. Aren’t there similar laws to protect the victims of sexual assault? ---
**Author:** ![blinkingblinking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@blinkingblinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blinkingblinking)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2007, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/59 "2007-09-22T19:39:59Z")
[QUOTE=RedRosesForMe] I agree with the numerous posters who see no racism and aren’t annoyed by referring to Qian as Pumpkin. Yes, her real name was quickly discovered, so there weren’t weeks, months, or years of reports referring to her as Pumpkin. The media could have switched to her given name with nary a problem. Well, I do see a bit of a problem, and it is race/ethnicity related. Qian Xun Xue is hard to spell and hard to pronounce. Someone who’d heard the reports of Pumpkin might hear on the radio driving home from work that her name is actually Qian. They want to learn more, so when they get home they try to google it or find the story on CNN or the BBC. But they can’t spell it, and probably wouldn’t recognize Qian Xun Xue as being the name they heard on the radio (here I willingly admit my ignorance of Chinese. Qian Xun Xue does not sound like anything in my head, I just see the words because I have no idea how to pronounce that) I think it would be the same for a blond, blue-eyed girl named Euphrosina Bagdasarian. Hard to remember, hard to spell, hard to pronounce. The media want you following their stories, and if they think you won’t realize that Princess = Euphrosina, or Pumpkin = Qian, well… They’re trying to capture the imagination of Joe Sixpack, who might find such exotic names annoying, or frightening, or less sympathetic than something more familiar. I do know that her English name was Claire, but perhaps the media doesn’t find Claire as captivating as Pumpkin. Doesn’t tug at the heartstrings quite the same. I also like **lynne** ’s suggestion of using these nicknames to allow the children who survive such traumatic experiences a little anonymity. Aren’t there similar laws to protect the victims of sexual assault? [/QUOTE] I also agree with the suggestion that maybe all children in bad situations should be given nicknames. The story is the most read story in Australia and NZ. There is no problem with finding out about it whether you can spell her name or not. ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2007, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856/60 "2007-09-22T20:23:21Z")
The whole thing here is known as “the Pumpkin case”. I have no problems with anyone calling Qian Xun Xue “Pumpkin” – but I note the _NZ Herald_ use it in quote marks, and always provide her real name. The case, though, is “the Pumpkin case.” It is a term that summarises the case of little child abandoned by a guy (allegedly) on the run from a heinous crime. We’ll get sick and tired of the word after a while, just as we do with every other media-driven spate of overkill. But there’s nothing wrong in its use. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-calling-her-pumpkin-please/419856.md?page=4)