You could also spend 10 mins like my brother did and just change your name to something you like, maybe even name yourself after a celebrity, rather than the one assigned to you.
There are many things one is forced to do in life for instance sell most of your time for money so you are treated with dignity. A name is a small price to pay... most of your life spend doing someone else's bidding is something much worse, and yet most people do it.
But your name is something you have the ability to change once you're an adult (and even earlier in some cases if you insist on being called by a preferred name or nickname).
You don't have the ability to change how someone (everyone?) else reacts to an unusual name.
Depending on where you live, changing your name can be much more of a hassle than this. My wife did it recently, and the whole process took several months and cost nearly $1000 all told. It involved filling out a bunch of paperwork, taking ads out in two legal newspapers, and a court date.
Yep; this was in Pennsylvania, which is apparently one of the more onerous states.
The stated purpose is so that you can't change your name in order to (for example) escape debt. So the way to do this is to pay to put an announcement in a legal periodical. She had to do it in two separate places: one was mandated (The Legal Intelligencer, which sounds like something out of Harry Potter), and she had the choice of a few others, of which she picked the cheapest one.
The ads themselves didn't cost $1000, but the whole process (including changing the name on her passport, etc.) came close to that.
Naming your child after an illegal and, at the time, much less accepted narcotic and an amoral beverage conglomerate seems to be short sighted in the least. At least the man who named his son "Sue" knew it would give him trouble.
I am glad she has come out of it ahead, and I wish her all the best in the world. It is shameful that teachers acted the way they did.
>"A lot of other people were thinking [my mom] was smoking marijuana and drinking Pepsi," she tells NPR. "In the black community, we're used to having names that are more cultural."
I'm not a native English speaker, so I might be in the wrong here, but is she using the word "cultural" in a different way than normally?
>No, African Americans have a unique culture in America, and whites are notoriously judgmental about it. The only reason you might find this "different" is if you don't consider Black culture to be legitimate. We call this "racism".
...but he's not American?
It's quite a stretch to arrive at an honest question about the use of a word - by someone outside of your own country's culture - to it being equated to racism, merely because it's from a egocentric (American society) point of view.
The world is a lot bigger than just America.
Maybe tone down the racist accusations until you have some qualitative context to use it. Otherwise, if antagonising people that might otherwise be sympathetic to your plights is your end goal, then by all means, carry on.
Yes, “cultural” is an adjective and in typical English has a noun to which it refers. In this case the noun may be implied by some other part of the conversation not included in the article.
Hmm, still I think Marijuana Pepsi is a bit different than Beauty or Precious. It’s more like the name of this Sudanese general: Telephone Kuku http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?mot2811
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[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 75.0 ms ] thread"We can't always go through life-changing things to make other people happy ... and I had to learn that early on."
You don't have the ability to change how someone (everyone?) else reacts to an unusual name.
"We can't always go through life-changing things to make other people happy ... and I had to learn that early on."
The stated purpose is so that you can't change your name in order to (for example) escape debt. So the way to do this is to pay to put an announcement in a legal periodical. She had to do it in two separate places: one was mandated (The Legal Intelligencer, which sounds like something out of Harry Potter), and she had the choice of a few others, of which she picked the cheapest one.
The ads themselves didn't cost $1000, but the whole process (including changing the name on her passport, etc.) came close to that.
Naming your child after an illegal and, at the time, much less accepted narcotic and an amoral beverage conglomerate seems to be short sighted in the least. At least the man who named his son "Sue" knew it would give him trouble.
I am glad she has come out of it ahead, and I wish her all the best in the world. It is shameful that teachers acted the way they did.
I'm not a native English speaker, so I might be in the wrong here, but is she using the word "cultural" in a different way than normally?
The only reason you might find this "different" is if you don't consider Black culture to be legitimate.
We call this "racism".
...but he's not American?
It's quite a stretch to arrive at an honest question about the use of a word - by someone outside of your own country's culture - to it being equated to racism, merely because it's from a egocentric (American society) point of view.
The world is a lot bigger than just America.
Maybe tone down the racist accusations until you have some qualitative context to use it. Otherwise, if antagonising people that might otherwise be sympathetic to your plights is your end goal, then by all means, carry on.
Unfamiliarity != delegitimization
Your use of the term racism certainly isn’t lending a hand towards others gaining positive familiarity.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/
I actually love it.
It says what the parents feel about the child.
"Brandy" is a name, why can't "Marijuana" be a name?