• Akasazh@feddit.nl
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    9 days ago

    If you can only name kids after your own ethnic background there’s a lot of Richards/ Riciardos/Jeans/Jans/Johns/Stephen/Joris/Mubaraks/Etiennes out there that are mislabelings.

    • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      All of those examples are linguistic drift though.

      Naming a white girl moana isn’t the same as some guy named Peter and his russian buddy Pyotr realizing that their names derive from the same origin in Greek (or Aramaic depending on how much you wanna argue Kefa should count as the origin since Petros was a direct translation of it as a name)

      • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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        9 days ago

        It’s not only linguistic drift, it’s about awareness. Three used to be a beer narrow set of names (in western Europe) that got used, with a mostly Catholic base, so your John, Paul, Marie type names which would hear the variation of your country. Usually the ancestors would be reflected in the naming convention.

        However awareness spreads through media like newspaper and film. Celebrity means that different spellings of names get noticed and get used, regardless of culture. There’s Estonian men named James, because of James Dean (or Bond). There’s kids named after fashion brands nowadays.

        The boundary between appropriation and homage is thin. Is Willem Dafoes embracing his school nickname insensitive towards the Dutch? It can be cringey, like Shia Labeoufs mother making two spelling mistakes in her new french inspired last name. It’s a bit time deaf maybe but I wouldn’t personally classify it as inappropriate.

        Ultimately culture works by drawing inspiration from others. Like Picasso being inspired by Cycladic sculpture and Renaissance artist by roman art.