OT - Lack of Freedom in China

Darwin · Post by **Darwin** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 5:53 pm

The despotic Communist regime of the People's Republic of China has displayed its true colors (red, of course), as reported at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/12 ... r_chinese/:

"A man in central China has been refused permission to name his son "@" because it cannot be translated into Mandarin - as the law demands.

According to the Beijing Morning Post, the nomenclative dissident from Zhengzhou argued that the symbol is in common use on keyboards and therefore fair game. Mercifully for the infant in question, his dad does not live in the kind of fully-fledged democracy where parents can name their children after pretty well anything they want - including software upgrades."

As mentioned above, this contrasts strongly with the freedom-loving American people, as shown by http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/03 ... ive_birth/:

"In the proud tradition of naming one's offspring after entire football teams, or a favourite brand of supercar, one US dad has decided to name his son after a software upgrade.

Jon Blake Cusack and wife Jamie, of Holland, Michigan, will certainly be spending many a sleepless night debugging little Jon Blake Cusack Version 2.0 and - in about 16 years' time - having a very hard time explaining to their unfortunate offspring whose bright idea this was in the first place."

The Weekenders · Post by **The Weekenders** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 6:41 pm

it's all Bush' fault of course. My Plan will eliminate that in five years.

Darwin · Post by **Darwin** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 6:56 pm

The Weekenders wrote:it's all Bush' fault of course. My Plan will eliminate that in five years.

It isn't perfectly clear what "it's" and "that" refer to. Will your Plan eliminate despotism in China or freedom in the US of A? Or maybe both?

susnfx · Post by **susnfx** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 7:10 pm

It's a proven fact that children given unusual or odd names do much worse in school than their peers.*

Susan

(*Don't ask me for the stats, it's just something I heard years ago on a national radio show.)

Darwin · Post by **Darwin** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 7:31 pm

susnfx wrote:It's a proven fact that children given unusual or odd names do much worse in school than their peers.

I dunno. I've mentioned before about my friend Bernice. He had a bachelor's degree, so at least he wasn't a high school dropout. Other than being in the 82d Airborne, he seemed pretty well adjusted--not at all like that boy named Sue.

My father's first name was Clymer, and he did well in school. My brother is a Clymer, too, and he skipped two grades and was Phi Beta Kappa.

I know that my father was sensitive about his name, because he once ran across mention of someone else named Clymer in a newspaper article and called the guy up to let him know that he was not alone. (And this was in his late 50s.) My brother always swore that he would never do such a thing to a child of his--though he ended up flipflopping on the issue.

I'm not sure how my father's step-father did in school, but he did have a degree--in journalism, I believe. I'm pretty sure that Alpha Meyer Cohen wasn't a common name in East Texas back in his day.

On the other hand, in spite of having one of the most common names of my generation, I flunked out of college twice. (And flunked trig in high school.)

Sometimes I think that about half of my granddaughter's schoolmates have names that have never before appeared on earth. Even the ones with traditional-sounding names spell them funny.

I believe that it all started when "Cindy" became "Cyndi". Dislexia, or a nasty plot to disrupt Western civilization?

emmline · Post by **emmline** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 7:59 pm

Darwin wrote: I believe that it all started when "Cindy" became "Cyndi". Dislexia, or a nasty plot to disrupt Western civilization?

It was an inevitable result of the increase in refined sugar in the standard American diet. An excess of cuteness.

Darwin · Post by **Darwin** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 8:42 pm

emmline wrote:
Darwin wrote: I believe that it all started when "Cindy" became "Cyndi". Dislexia, or a nasty plot to disrupt Western civilization?
It was an inevitable result of the increase in refined sugar in the standard American diet. An excess of cuteness.

Ah. Is that it?

And how many ways are there to spell Meghan, Meagan, Megan, or whatever the heck it is? At least I haven't seen "Maygun"...yet.

I just can't bring myself to sing, "Get along home, Cyndi, Cyndi..."

But maybe that song contains a clue of what was to come:

You ought to see my Cindy, she lives a-way down South
She's so sweet, the honeybees swarm around her mouth

Wombat · Post by **Wombat** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:04 pm

Darwin wrote:
Sometimes I think that about half of my granddaughter's schoolmates have names that have never before appeared on earth. Even the ones with traditional-sounding names spell them funny.

I believe that it all started when "Cindy" became "Cyndi". Dislexia, or a nasty plot to disrupt Western civilization?

EZ 4 U 2 sneer @ cre8tive folk like me.

TyroneShoelaces · Post by **TyroneShoelaces** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:14 pm

susnfx wrote:It's a proven fact that children given unusual or odd names do much worse in school than their peers.*

Susan

(*Don't ask me for the stats, it's just something I heard years ago on a national radio show.)

I could just feel this post crying out to me.

MarkB · Post by **MarkB** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 5:39 am

I think France has had an offical first name list for boys and girls for a century or so, that parents couldn't deviate from in naming their child. So why should China be any different.

MarkB

missy · Post by **missy** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 6:26 am

one of my "hats" at work is safety coordinator, which included training and record keeping. Over the years, I've gotten pretty good at "decyphering" handwriting to spell names, but recently I've had to add the "please print your name clearly" to the signature line.
Even when I could read the name, I had no idea if I was spelling it correctly!!! And I'm not talking about those of ethnic origin outside the USA - I've figured out the Chinese, Korean, Malyasian, Indian, etc. with no problems. I'm talking kids that are 25 and younger that were born and raised in the USA. As stated above - even "common" names don't have "common" spellings anymore.
I also have to order labcoats with name tags for everyone - but the company only has a "limited" selection of names. Missy was no problem. Natoshia wound up getting just a corporate logo on hers.

susnfx · Post by **susnfx** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 8:19 am

I've got a sweet niece whose parents weighed her down with an odd spelling of a lovely name: Bryttni. She'll go through her entire life saying her name is "Bryttni, b-r-y-t-t-n-i" like it's all one name.

In our medical clinic we see loads of kids with names or spellings that just make me cringe. I am not making this up: we had a little boy come in with his family - the Davidsons. His first name was Harley. Why would you do that to a kid?

Susan

MarkB · Post by **MarkB** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 8:38 am

How do you think I feel, my given name is Mark, nothing out of the ordinary there you suspect, but I was actually named after a favourite dog who had a hair lip. When the dog barked it sounded more like mmmark, mmmark!

MarkB

izzarina · Post by **izzarina** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 8:41 am

susnfx wrote:In our medical clinic we see loads of kids with names or spellings that just make me cringe. I am not making this up: we had a little boy come in with his family - the Davidsons. His first name was Harley. Why would you do that to a kid?

did he have any tattoos?

My cousin named his daughter Brooke Lynn, which I thought was weird. And everyone thinks I'M weird for naming my son Finbar :roll:

sturob · Post by **sturob** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 8:44 am

Denmark has a similar rule to the Chinese one, I think, or at least one of the Scandinavian countries does.

Such naming is just a form of child abuse we all seem happy to live with. My grandfather was Eules Lester, and his twin sister was Eunice Esther.

Airsickness bag, anyone?

Stuart
(which has been Stu, Stubob, Sturob, Stud, Beef Stu, Rabbit Stu, and the like)