Maybe in Urdu? The Arabic word for martyr is just shaheed; there is no ‘t’ in it.
Nope, I’d never hire a man named Bobby Ray, or a woman named Oprah.
Clearly folks with names like that will never be successful.
:rolleyes:
CMC +fnord!
Thanks, because I really had a hard time distinguishing an internet handle from a given name.
My point was that people have the freedom to call themselves and their brood whatever they want to. This kind of question isn’t going to get an answer because it’s asking why people like something. Why black people give their kids names that most people have never heard before.
The poster wasn’t asking about 4Real or anything else you might put on a license plate, they were just letters put together to form names that white people don’t call their kids. Why is that “ridiculous?” Or, excuse me, RIDICULOUS?
I never said I wouldn’t, or that they couldn’t. You need to start addressing what I am saying instead of what you want to think I’m saying.
And that tells you what about the intelligence and ability of the person in question? Anything besides your baseless assumptions? Classism is ugly.
I’m sorry I offended you, I’ll bite myself if it will make you feel better. How many times do you want me to? (And that’s not sarcasm I always offer that to people I offend because I need to be punished)
And technically he wasn’t asking why they like it, he was asking the origins. Though him saying ridiculous implied a little more all he really asked (rereading the OP) was the origins of said naming practices, which I saw nothing wrong with. But I’m too stupid to figure it out so i’m probably totally wrong. And please, I really do need you to tell me how many times I should bite myself.
About that individual? Probably very little. But if you look it at from a statistical basis, a person from that background is less likely to be a good employee than almost any other. When you are going through a stack of resumes that are basically the same, you gotta cut it down somehow. If I got 6 resumes for one spot, and three of them are Quanda, Shalawnday, and Te’Shawn, and the other three are Jamal, Marcus, and Dwayne, I’m calling back the last three and not the first. It might not be fair, but that’s the way it is.
No worries. I figured that the answer to his question was that they felt compelled to name their kids that way, or, they liked the name. Or tried to be creative, or make up a unique name that no one else had. Or like someone else mentioned early, was a derivation of the parents’ names. He already asked a black person why and mocked their answer. Perhaps he should survey all the people with “black” names and find the common thread.
I bet, more often than not, the people with those names don’t care for them, or as someone else also mentioned, find them burdensome, for the very reason this thread exists.
On what grounds do you support the claim that people named “Te’Shawn” are less likely to be a good employee than those with otherwise comparable resumes named “Dwayne”?
I think they are more likely to come from broken homes, and from parents with lower education and income levels.
Oh, I’m sorry, you’re not racist, you just make your decisions based on other ugly stereotypes. I stand corrected.
It isn’t a stereotype that people from broken families that have low education and low income levels are less successful, its a fact.
But you don’t have to make indirect inferences about their level of education; you have accurate information about it in front of you on the resume. So what use is the vague generalizing from the name once you’ve already got the plain facts of the matter?
I’m not sure why being from a family of traditionally low income would lead to one’s being a poor worker, in the case where one’s resume is otherwise comparable, but I can see any number of other reasons why it would lead to one’s outlook in life being reduced, including reasons being illustrated in this thread. If it’s really important to you, however, but you don’t care to ask about it directly, perhaps you should look into other factors that have even stronger (statistical) correlation with one’s income level; I imagine things like looking at what city someone grew up in or straight-up, no-pussyfooting-around-it discrimination (in the literal sense) on basis of race have comparable statistical power in this regard.
Perhaps, but like I said, for the third time now I believe, if the resumes are basically the same I gotta use something to make a decision.
Because it probably sounds like “anus”. Sorry if someone already said this, I didn’t read the whole thread yet.
But if the basis of your using that something is that it gives you information about their level of education, that basis is nullified once you already have concrete information about their level of education. You might just as well decide to toss out all applicants whose names begin with vowels.
Nah, haven’t lost any sleep yet. Also, yeah, a few people on here actually HAVE given me crap about my login name. Specifically, once, I was discussing how I used to work for Dept of Homeland Security and a person said, "Why should we take advice about something this serious from a person on here named “diggleblop”?
And now for my explanation.
I mean “ridiculous” in the sense of being outrageously creative. Almost laughably so. In a cruel sort of “now why would you go and name your kid that!” If I were to take these same standards, hell, WHY NOT call my next child, diggleblop? That is all I meant.
Diggleblop isn’t my real name obviously, it’s my website/forum. But if I were to go and name my child that, to me, it would be ridiculous and almost cruel. Yes, it’s creative, but cruel.
And for the record, I mean nothing racist or mean about my question. I am also sincerely curious as to where these names originated. ARE THEY IN FACT creativity? Or are they really tribal names?
Regarding naming, the chapter on names in Freakonomics is worth checking out. It addresses some of the questions you ask and links to other sources on the subject.
I shall definitely check that out, sounds fun !
Just for the record, a lot of black people–myself included–have the very same reaction. I have to agree with previous posters who’ve suggested that this phenomenon is not just a function of race, but of a variety of factors including socioeconomic class, generational identity, etc.
One of the reasons that such stereotypes are so persistent is that most of them have at least an element of truth in them. Mind you, I’m not defending the notion of making blanket judgments about a person based solely on any single characteristic. Just saying that just because a stereotype is ugly doesn’t mean that it has no validity. Like it or not, the reality is that a name can–and often does–serve as an (admittedly imperfect) indicator of a person’s cultural heritage.
I wish I had her nerve! Nothing like being corrected by a 14-year-old for not pronouncing “Balil” as “Bilal”…