<Hijack>I had a friend who loved this notion, and wished that her parent had done this with her. Then she worked out what the options were and was less enthused. Her mom was named Cathy and her dad was named Phil, so she would have been called Cattle or Filthy. </Hijack>
And if you were a corporation of any size you would get sued and lose a lot of money. What next, will you eliminate people on hair style (curly is in, straight is out), but not on race, and presume that will somehow protect you from the accusation that you are, in fact, discriminating upon race? Or reject applicants from a certain zip code (again, not a protected class, but if you pick the right zip codes, you’re headed for Losing a Big Law Suit City)?
The effect (and probably intention) of discriminating based upon name is to discriminate based upon race.
It’s the same exact reason that, in the past, people were baffled when meeting me, a white Natasha, after only having seen my name on paper. There are a lot of people in black [and Hispanic] communities that like certain ethnic names, and in some areas, they’re more widely used by black [or Hispanic] minorities than the members of the [non-Hispanic] white population. Until a few years back, I was the only white Natasha that I’d ever met; then again, the area I grew up in did not have too many people of Slavic heritage, and Natalie/Natalia was a lot more popular.
The reason I found the name Anastasia so amusing was because it’s the name of a cartoon movie. That’s all. Don’t look into it so hard. I think I might name my next son, Aladdin.
But, yeah Diggleblop, the name Anastasia does date back a long, long time before the cartoon. The bemusement arises because unlike the others you cited, it is not of recent construction ( there was a late Roman emperor named Anastasius ) and probably most have never associated it primarily with American blacks. It’s really more a Russian thing.
No big deal, you’ve obviously missed running into it in other contexts somehow. Just your “no joke” probably took a lot of people by surprise, because I suspect most wouldn’t consider it any more exotic than ‘Amelia’.
Please see my instructions in post #95. If you want to discuss discrimination based on names, please start a thread in another forum. This thread should focus on discussion of the names themselves.
I would have thought that the hospital staff would have attempted to prevent those things. Doesn’t the staff prepare the forms, and the physician signs the birth certificate?
Hospital staff don’t have veto power over naming. In any case, there’s no standardized procedure in the United States for the preparation of birth certificates.
Alice (in Wonderland)
Peter (Pan)
Rudolph (the Red-Nosed Reindeer)
Jack (and the Beanstalk)
Charlie (Brown)
Charlotte ('s Web)
Robin (Hood)
Oliver (Twist)
Heathcliff
Garfield
… Anastasia is hardly different from any of these named.
If you think Anastasia is no different than plain old Charlie or Jack or Robin, you obviously don’t understand exotic names. I can guarantee you that there are millions more people named Charlie than there are Anastasia in the world. I would ask you how many people named Anastasia you know personally as opposed to someone on your list, but my guess is that you’re the type that likes to argue and would naturally come up with an answer similar to “well, my cousin is named Anastasia, so take that” type of person.
Have a good rest of your Sunday.
Thanks to the rest of you guys. And for those saying I should do some research, I knew about the story and the movie before I said anything. I also knew it was a crock, so that’s why I said that someone naming their child Anastasia was kinda cruel in a funny way.
I think I might name my next son, Aladdin.