This is the
last entry you can comment on for January.
How
essential is a first name in terms connecting to one's identity? Is it understandable that some immigrants abandon it? Is this a sign of their eagerness to fit in,
or does their country of destination require them to assimilate too much?
Everybody’s first name is a very sensitive topic since we have no power in its choice while on the other hand, it can influence us significantly. A name is a part of our first impression which plays an incredibly important role in introducing ourselves to new people. Humans have a tendency to make assumptions based only on our name and then behave accordingly even though they don’t know our personality. As an illustration of discrimination, ‘there would have been more than 50 percent more babies born with an Arabic name in France if there weren’t an economic penalty associated with having one.’ In spite of unfairness, this feature is associated with sociocultural evolution and historical stereotypes which we can’t overcome so easily.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the fact that even in the famous trolley problem ‘the name of the individual played a role in the decision‘ really surprised me. One issue is economic penalty but death or “murder” in this case is a much more serious problem which we should be aware of. Our name doesn’t change our value or right to live. If we don’t know a person’s character or circumstances, why they are the way they are, we don’t deserve the right to judge them. In such an extreme situation when it comes to people’s lives, we should definitely depersonalize from their names and the emotions which they induce in us.
In Slovakia, in my opinion, it can be seen from two different points of view. On one hand, there are certainly some prejudices towards untypical first names taken from movies, soap operas – this is related mainly to Roma people - or other languages since Slovaks are very nationalistic, especially the older ones. However, children can often be cruel as well and bully those whose parents wanted their child to be special. Such kids could suffer from it their whole childhood and it could even result in mental disease or anxiety. On the other hand, usage of English-sounding names can be understood as part of our economic integration since parents want to give their children as many opportunities as possible. To demonstrate, the first five most popular girl names in Slovakia in the past few years were Sofia, Ema, Nina, Viktória and Natália, names which can be easily translated to English and are internationally widespread. None of these are typical Slavic names and are recognizable in the whole world. Maybe once, as the author of the article suggested, we will come back to our roots and celebrate the names our ancestors gave us.
This is a comment from Kornelia:
ReplyDeleteThe fact that people try to change their personal data, including name, religion, nationality or even a race, is not a completely new subject for discussion. It was really common to adjust your identity in the past to the place you lived in – as it was shown in 2016 research by Goldstein and Stecklov. One of the main reasons for “hiding one’s origins” – prejudices from other people – was more understandable back then, because the world wasn’t so globalized, there was no internet and people had a lack of information about distant countries and distinct nationalities and races. The simplest example: at the time of World War II., many Jews pretended to follow another religion to be accepted or in most cases to save their lives.
What surprised me, on the other hand, is that the study by Zhao and Biernat was conducted recently – not even a year ago, with participants being modern people living in a modern world and yet, it showed that even nowadays, there are huge differences in races and different nationalities. They were not looking for the reasons why people change their names into more “white-sounding”, they observed that it really makes a difference and that’s the problem. People are biased by general thoughts about others and will always categorize and put them in the boxes in order to ease their process of deciding. It is easier to say that all Arabian are “bad guys” than to admit that some of them can be as normal as people from your (Europe, America) region.
I am not one those who find themselves belonging to some particular nationality or religion, because I don’t want my thoughts and opinions to be influenced by some strong traditions, but if someone feels like being a part of a certain group of people, I don’t see a problem with that and there is certainly no need for them to be discriminated against. People should be judged based on their behaviour, education, moral attitude and so on and not race, nationality or other biologically or geographically given data that cannot be changed.