The aesthetics of names

[firecat]

This is a post by Mike Elgan on G+ titled "The trouble with Google's names policies: Real unconventional names = Bad. Fake 'normal' names = OK."

https://plus.google.com/113117251731252114390/posts/XtkGjGsBA3V

The post itself is not what I want to talk about though. It's a comment in that thread by Robert Scoble, a big Google+ booster who has recently been going back and forth about what he thinks of Google's name policy.

...some people have "non common" names and I do have empathy for those who really have weird names, like M3 (if that's really his legal name).

But that said I am totally groking the AESTHETIC that Google is going for. They are trying to look different than Twitter is and I really really like seeing names that look common here. IE, most everyone I've met in the real world has a first and last name.

I can scarcely put into words the rage I feel about the notion that people's names are an "aesthetic" issue reasonably subject to control. It's racist, sexist, classist, xenophobic, and just about every other -ist and -phobic I can think of.

If Scoble were to say "I want to use my name, and I don't want to feel pressured to come up with a handle," I would understand it. He says he doesn't like Second Life because he wanted to use his name there, and I also don't like Second Life's policy of requiring you to use a name they pick for you (you get to enter your own "first name" but you have to choose from their list of "last names"). But to think that "I really like seeing names that look common" is a good basis for a policy? Or to even think that it's worth uttering in public? I don't get it.

Comments

[sophie]

I haven't been following what Scoble's said about these things, but I do know he posted a blog entry not that long ago which pretty much seems to show that he thinks it's less "authentic" when people use pseudonyms: http://scobleizer.com/2011/03/07/the-real-authenticity-killer-and-an-aside-about-how-bad-the-yahoo-brand-has-gotten/

[firecat]

I need brain bleach now.

[libskrat]

I know I'm not the first to utter a hearty FUCK YOU, SCOBLE, but I certainly hope I am not the last.

Signed,
[Greek given name] [Slavic maiden name] [Finnish surname]

[nanila]

Dude, what. I can't even...His argument is, "I like the way the policy makes the names look because it is familiar to me, and because I like it, it must be good." I might as well argue, "He uses the word 'grok' in his comment. I do not like this word, and therefore his point of view is stupid."

[pipisafoat]

I might as well argue, "He uses the word 'grok' in his comment. I do not like this word, and therefore his point of view is stupid."
♥♥♥

[aedifica]

*I* could argue "He can't spell the word 'grokking.' Therefore his point of view is stupid." I won't, because his point of view is stupid for many other, better reasons, but I could.

[julian]

I actually think it's a perfectly good basis for a policy; just not a policy for a site I can support or utilize.

(And dude, think about your adjectives a bit. What /makes/ a name "weird," anyway? Are you aiming for a my-niche-of-the-US-only site? AIM HIGHER!)

[apis_mellifera]

Second Life is different now, actually. New users are assigned the last name of Resident and there's a display name option that you can make pretty much anything you want.

Scoble is such an ass. It's all about him and his comfort, apparently.

[firecat]

Good to know about SL.

[meloukhia]

What.

What. I don't even. I just. What. Can we TALK about how much imperialism is bound up in his conception of 'normal' names?

[amadi]

Scoble has always been about what made him feel good in his white, middle class, male techie world. If it rubbed up against his "ooh, unfamiliar" spot, it was by definition a bad thing. I have near as can be to zero need for Scoble's observations on just about anything.

[firecat]

I have near as can be to zero need for Scoble's observations on just about anything.

After seeing about three of his posts, I'm pretty much there. It frustrates me that so many people on G+ are taking his posts seriously.

[lilacsigil]

Well, he hasn't met all that many people different from himself, has he? Off the top of my head I can think of at least a dozen people (all Indonesian) who only have and use one name.

[firecat]

I live with one. (Who is not Indonesian.)

[submarine_bells]

With the caveat that I'd never even heard of Scoble before G+ started up, I'd say that my assessment of him, based on his writings on this topic that I've seen, is that he's either trolling or stupid-and-provincial. Oh, or possibly that he's a voice-for-hire and someone's paying him to say this stuff, maybe? Dunno how likely that last one is, though.

He certainly seems to be getting more attention than his current writing seems to warrant. Did he used to be better, but has been Got by the Brain Eater?

[zeborah]

He's a Social Media Guru. I know of him from Friendfeed, which he was all over until he decided it was dying and moved onto the Next Big Thing.

[merielle]

Wow. WOW. What a privilege-drenched asshat. I'm just ever so sorry that other people's identities are sometimes inconvenient for him. Is it okay that my last name has a hyphen or should I have run that by him first if I want to use it anywhere online? Jerk.

[twisted_times]

*sends you a big bumper=sized bag of hyphens*

[emceeaich]

Um, Scoble, display names have been available in SL since last fall. But he does like to us SL as his whipping boy.

[azurelunatic]

Oh wow Scoble, way to improve my opinion from the Valley gossip. Well done.

Also, consistent much? "I don't like Second Life because I can't have the name I want", and "I like Google+ because you can't have the name you want." Fuck you, sir, fuck you.

[firecat]

But it's perfectly consistent: It's all about what he wants.

[shanaqui]

I really wish I was Nikki ferch Vince (traditional and not much used patronymic system from Wales) now. Just to go piss him off.

Also, in Wales, "the name you are commonly known by" would probably be [your nickname] + [your profession]. So Dafydd Evans who is a baker would be Dai the Bread, Evan Evans who teaches in the primary school would be Evan the Schoolin', Dafydd Jones who is an undertaker would be Dai the Death. (My dad really did know a Dai the Death. And Dai really is pronounced 'die'.) That naming system is still in force in the valleys now: I'd love to see a site that accommodates that, I really would! But honestly, given our surnames are arbitrarily assigned first names that may not even reflect our ancestry, picked from a very small pool of English names, it's the only way to tell which Dafydd Evans you're talking about, because I guarantee you there's more than one.

[firecat]

I love that. It's how people tend to get referred to in my household too, either by reference to other people they're in relationships with or by their profession or by where we know them from.

[twisted_times]

On the subject of names, here's an articles on Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, which Google really should read all about (I seen to recall G+ rules stating that all parts of the same user name must use the same language, amongst other dumbfuuckery).

[firecat]

I've posted about that article before, I think. It is superb.

[evilawyer]

Had "Bobby" moved during childhood to a neighborhood filled with people who couldn't pronounce his name and laughed when they heard it pronounced correctly, he might be less of and "we like 'common' names" kind of guy.

[datagoddess]

What gets me is that if I used my legal given name no one other than my doctor, my HR person, and my mother would know who I was. "Toni" has been my nickname since before I was born, but it's not what's on *any* government documentation, but because it's a common name they're not challenging it. Heck, if my dad and my brother both were on G+ and using their legal names I wouldn't be able to tell who was who without other clues.

And Scoble can bite my shiny metal ass.

[eggcrack]

Aesthetic, huh? Common looking names, huh? You're kind of an asshole, Scoble.

[franzeska]

*sigh*

I use my legal name online. Despite being quite open about this and extremely easy to google, I still get accused, regularly, of being a sock of someone with a more common frances/francesca/etc. spelling. (And I don't disagree: My name does look an awful lot like one common style of pseudonym creation.) The vast majority of middle class, white, Western European names that fall into a Firstname Lastname system still look "weird" to a lot of people whose own names fall into that system. On top of the racism and unwarranted prejudice against letting people choose their own names, this silly view of aesthetics simply doesn't apply to the real world--even the parts he's probably thinking of.

[firecat]

Good point. It seems people will take any opportunity to comment on, mangle, or disbelieve a person's name. E.g., name is Stef but since I look female, some people persist in calling me Stephanie.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I can see how treating names as subject to his aesthetics is being an arrogant jerk, but I think it might or might not be -ist or -phobic. If by "names that look common" he means a certain ethnicity, then yeah. And I am reminded of author Owl Goingback being denied some online presence under his real name because it didn't look real! If he just means "a name similar to that which any parents have ever given a child anywhere in the world"--that's some kind of hegemonic, but I don't even know the word for it. Parentist? Usually patriarchal, but not always. Note that this isn't about intent in the emotional sense but rather what those words mean in this context, which I think isn't at all clear.

But I think "arrogant jerk" is enough of a condemnation. I really liked the bit you quoted here, a few entries back, about real names leading to more censored communication and known but not search-linked pseudonyms leading to more open communication. Yes!

UPDATE

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

OK, supergee mentioned that Indonesia generally has single names, so that was my ignorance. I can see "sexist" via patronymics. I still don't get classist.


Meditations on single names and class did lead me to wonder--could Cher join Google+ under that name?

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

It's a completely ridiculous position. On the one hand, "common" is incredibly relative. If you carve my first name off just before the hyphen, it's astoundingly common in some parts of the world, relatively uncommon in other parts, and its commonality differs even in a given place depending on your community -- it's common here in Muslim communities, for example. But even aside from relative commonality, having an uncommon name doesn't make it any less legitimate. (If you *don't* truncate my first name before the hyphen, it's globally unique, but it's still a legitimate name, and my actual real name.)

This feels like part of a wider discussion about nomenclature which has been getting rather heated of late (or perhaps it always is, for people sufficiently distant from average age of those giving birth), and while it does make me bristle to some degree when I see ordinary names where every vowel has been replaced with a 'y', that's not an internal reaction that I think is good or fair or should dictate policy or makes those people less legitimately-named.