Like many other browns I know, my name seems to bring out the worst in other people. When I taught elementary school in Brooklyn, an older colleague insisted on calling me “Ms. R.” “I don’t mean to offend,” he explained, “but if I try saying your last name, I know I’ll just sound silly.” Well, now you just sound like an idiot, I thought. A similar encounter occurred during my first week of graduate school, when the Dean approached me and introduced herself. I told her my name, and she asked, “Why couldn’t your parents just name you Molly or Jane?” Yes, I know, Naina Ramajayan…so difficult to pronounce, that even I just call myself ‘The N.’ It’s all pretty ironic, actually; considering that I’m a southie Hindu, my name is about as simple as it gets.
Thankfully, the baggage that comes with my name is fairly harmless, and I’m able to laugh it off. No one has ever looked at my name and suggested that I be targeted for homeland security. Some of my friends from college, however, haven’t been as lucky. When my friend Rahul Shah introduced himself to his co-worker a while ago, she responded, “Like, as in, the Shah of Iran, that Holocaust denier?” (Oh yes, she did.) Another friend felt pressured to start using his middle name at work because his boss joked that his first name, Amit, sounded like ‘Ahmed.’ And so what if does? “Dude,” he explained, “Three of the 9-11 hijackers were named Ahmed.” Amit, Ahmed, Shah, Iran…looks like the code is finally getting cracked.
I used to think these issues concerning names were a burden only for us brown people. But then I learned that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois is in a similar predicament. CNN did a nice story a few weeks ago (you can view the clip here) on the “controversy” surrounding the Senator’s name. Since Obama rhymes with Osama, Barack rhymes with Iraq (and Chirac), and Hussein is his middle name, he’s evidently a newly-discovered threat to the United States. After watching that clip, I felt guilty for thinking my buddy Amit was just being paranoid of his boss all these years. In fact, now I’m even more paranoid than I ever was before. Of rampant stupidity, that is. Aasif Mandvi appeared on the Daily Show on Tuesday night to bring his perspective on Obama-Osama-gate.
My favorite line: Aasif Mandvi? Yikes, I sound like trouble. People, keep your eye on me.
Jokes aside, I have to wonder: if Barack’s name — or any of our names, for that matter — rhymed with McVeigh, Rudolph, or Kaczynski, would any of this even be a topic of discussion?
Who said it’s unfair?
Persecution complex alert.
All the people here love America and it’s culture as well as digging their Indian roots. Get over it, stop hallucinating the apocalypse.
~El Snapper~
Tamil,
I agree it doesn’t require a Judeo-Christian (or Anglo-Saxon) name, but the first name is a big hint which way your parents want you to go. I mean, there aren’t many fifth-generation German-Americans who name their kids Wolfgang or Reinhardt. There are almost none, in fact. And not many third- or fourth-generation Italian-American kids will be called Giovanni instead of John. There are Patricks and Seans around, but Irish names are an exception because they have been mixed in with English names for so long back in the British Isles.
Again, I truly do sympathize with your all’s situation, even though I cannot empathize because it is not my experience. As I said, I don’t think multiculturalism works, we’ve tried in it the West for 40 years with awful results (by which I don’t mean we shouldn’t have allowed South Asians etc. to immigrate here, but we should not have done so without the expectation of assimilation). So my view is that you all have been put into this difficult situation that is not of your making. Now you blame whites for xenophobia and racism etc., but it’s entirely natural and healthy for a tribe to assert that immigrants to their land assimilate. I would not move to India and then complain that people can’t pronounce my name, put scare quotes around the world “Indian culture” on message boards, etc.
Snapper,
Well, the apocalypse is global warming, which makes this whole discussion moot anyway.
WhiteGuy I feel your pain, I really do sympathise with it, but I can’t empathise because it’s not my experience.
WG,
‘American culture’ is not static. Americans of today do not possess the same rituals, practices, customs, ideas as those of a hundred years ago – they’ve changed radically due to immigration, technology, social progress etc. So what is it exactly that is being threatened, except some abstract notion in the heads of some paranoid individuals?
Y’alls.. We in the South have a perfectly good word to substitute for the clumsy “your all’s” and more people should embrace it.
Well Snapper, imagine this situation in reverse: let’s say India’s economy takes off, and 20 years from now you’ve got 50 million Chinese, 50 million Indonesians, and 50 million Nigerians living in India…then, I’m guessing, your language would be less about tolerance and xenophobia and racism, and suddenly nativism won’t be a dirty word any more! Morality is a flexible concept, no?
White Guy,
Are you saying that there are no non-Anglo-Saxon names (ie non-native to British Isles) that aren’t main stream America? If what you are saying is right then 50% of guys would be named John Smith :). Can’t one dream that Amit becomes as main stream as Brad one day?
I don’t see any problem in immigrants coming in and enhancing the existing culture to a new culture that everyone accepts. As you said there are two ways to go: take the easy way out and choose Brad or choose the more difficult way but more fulfilling (personal choice) name Amit. When a few Amit’s contribute positively to the American Society then the name ‘Amit’ becomes main stream.
What you are preaching is an exclusionary culture…
Who is this ‘us’? WASP? or the Irish, German, Italians that came over later or the blacks?
Bored,
Agreed that no culture is static, to be preserved forever in formaldehyde. But neither is American culture endlessly elastic — more elastic than some, but nowhere near endlessly so.
It was a difficult, many decades-long process by which the term “American” expanded from White Protestant to Protestant-Catholic-Jew. But further leaps — to encompass Hindus, Muslims, Latin Americans, etc., are going to be even more difficult because they involve racial leaps that weren’t there with other white groups. Which is why I note how much more difficult it is for an Indian-American to name their kid Brad instead of Sanjiv than an Italian to just change the Giuseppe to a Joe.
The main reason I say multiculturalism is a failure (well, Tony Blair just said it too) is that if a culture is endlessly elastic in meaning, then it has no meaning. If anyone is 100% American with any name, any cultural habits, etc., then being American is meaningless.
May be you should read some history. India is full of immigrants (though not recent) that came and settled in India. There are already 13-15 major regions with different cultures and languages in India. Even now in India more than 10M people moved across these different regions for jobs in the last decade or so. There are problems and some nativist rhetoric but all in all it is a mostly harmonious multiculturalist society. So what you are saying has already happened.
Circus says:
“Are you saying that there are no non-Anglo-Saxon names (ie non-native to British Isles) that aren’t main stream America?”
Well, name one? Defined as a first name that people outside that ethnic group give their kids on a regular basis.
Circus,
India is a harmonious, multicultural society? I haven’t been, but I know they just built a 2,500-mile wall to keep people from Bangladesh out. And I know that in less than 60 years India has gone from being one country to splitting into three, and no one here would be too shocked, I imagine, if it split further in the next 60. So I don’t see how you can argue that India is a harmonious, multicultural society. Race has and continues to tear it apart at the seams, which is somethign I don’t want to happen to the U.S. I think that’s quite reasonable of me…
speaking of foreign names, this is a must see for all “desis”. The Brown empire strikes back 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0pBcYJwgyM
Um…if they gave it to their kids on a regular basis, it would be mainstream American. I can think of an example though, Siobhan is a fairly common Irish name in the US. I don’t think anyone would say that Irish-Americans are not mainstream American yet most Americans would have no idea how to pronounce that name.
I don’t think elasticity of culture would make being American meaningless; I think that’s what defines America.
Well, if they did, desishiksa…but they don’t. As I stated before, there aren’t any non-Biblical or Anglo-Saxon first names (that I am aware of) that are mainstream American, i.e. given regularly to kids outside their own ethnic group.
I already mentioned above why some Irish names are exceptions (because they have been mixed among British names in the British Isles for centuries). That having been said, I don’t know many Siobhans, and the few I do know have Irish surnames.
Even Hispanic names are not mainstream in this sense. There are lots of John Hernandezes with no Anglo-Saxon lineage, but not many Juan Smiths. When you do have a Spanish first name and a non-Spanish last name, there’s almost always some Hispanic lineage being referenced. Which isn’t to say there aren’t a lot of Juans in the U.S., obviously there are, but that it’s still almost exclusively a name for people with Hispanic heritage.
The Indian subcontinent was split into two countries, and the nations of India and Pakistan were born as a result in 1947. Pakistan later further split into two countries. So no, India has never split from one country into three. I don’t care what your opinions are on other matters, but please do not go about distorting Indian history for your purposes.
BTW, interestingly it was Paskistan, which defined itself in a much more monolithic way, that split into two parts in 1971, as it could not reconcile the obvious paradoxes such an identity defined from ‘above’ created. India, on the other hand, has managed its diversity quite well.
I, for one, will be extremely surprised if anything of that sort happened. I have no idea what you are basing this observation of yours on. Do you care to elaborate?
Maybe if you read this, you could get some idea of how diverse and multicultural India is. The diversity you see in the US currently doesn’t even come close.
According to the SSA website, the seventh most popular name for girls in 2005 was “Isabella” and the ninth was “Ava”. [neither from the Brit. Isles AFAIK].
WG,
I notice that you ignore the giant ‘racial leap’ between whites and blacks in America – as though ‘American Culture’ were something exclusively built by whites. What cave have you been living in? You also ignore the fact that, up until a few decades ago, ‘mainstream’ America would have considered itself racially distinct from Jewish America. Two racial leaps already traversed by ‘American culture’. And come to think of it, many considered the Irish to be racially inferior for a long time as well (reflecting dominant British attitudes). Three racial leaps. I find your lack of faith in the resilience of American culture to be shockingly unpatriotic.
Btw, you needn’t bespeak a lack of acquaintance with India – your ignorance is quite obvious. India has been accepting refugees for a long time. India accepted a large influx of Chinese refugees after the Maoist revolution. She accepted many Tibetan refugees after the occupation of Tibet (the Dalai Lama, interestingly, turned down America’s offer of residency, saying he preferred India). India has also accepted an overwhelming number of Bangladeshi refugees since Partition.
India is home to a larger number of Muslims than Pakistan. Her current Prime Minister is a Sikh. There is a flourishing Christian community. India is also the only country where the native inhabitants never persecuted its Jews (and yes, there were three different communities of Jews in India). This is just the beginning of the story of Indian diversity. If we take into consideration the fact that during all this, India was beset with backbreaking economic and social problems, her history of stability and tolerance must appear miraculous.
In short, WG, you don’t have a damn clue what you’re talking about.
Here’s the fixed link.
WhiteGuy,
You have some valid points.
True, an assimilation in Amreeka by an Italian Catholic is different from a Bihari Brahmin. I remember in graduate school, a German friend with a guitar on his back who arrived the same semester I did from Gerrrrrrmany. He assimilated within 5 minutes ………the first weekend, he was bar hopping in Ithaca on his own, getting his band together, and the new dates.
True, also the definition of assimilation has changed dramatically.
However,
There are lot of Greek immigrants who do maintain their names even 3rd-4th generation.
The fence along the Bangladesh border is a joke. There are 10s of millions of Bangladeshis working in India as itinerant workers.
Also, religion plays a huge role in dividing India not race, there is essentially one race.
There are hundreds. Erik/Eric (Norse), and Emma (German) are just two examples starting with the letter E.
I never said that present India accepts unregulated immigration. I just pointed out India is and has been very diverse and that was possible due to long ago migration of various races. BD situation is in a very short time span and ebbs and flows happen. In the longer time span India has been very multicultural. Current ‘Indian Culture’ is an amalgam of many different cultures. Granted that amalgam happened sometimes peaceably and sometimes forcibly.
Regarding names go here and see the ‘ethnic’ sounding names. But your criteria of main-stream names is totally different from mine. I define a name is main stream when that name is known or accepted as American by significant enough population.
Yeah, it is possible. If it happens then I would be wrong. But the cultural osmosis has happened at a greater scale in India and I don’t see why it wouldn’t in America. It is not easy but it would.
Having defended multiculturalism doesn’t mean that WG doesn’t make valid points in his first post. I have heard far too many complaints that Whites/Blacks/Hispanics can’t pronounce Indian (or any ethnic sounding) names and are made fun of. I don’t think it is fair to expect everyone to pronounce properly or even try to in all possible situations. I don’t think even most desis can pronounce some of the African or Scandinavian or Dutch names or even try.
When I saw the Colbert video, I was happy that he atleast appeared to try. That is all one can expect until such names become more main stream. I say Siddarth is main stream now :). temporarily atleast…
Chandra was a popular name in 70’s. I am sure that not all of them have Indian ancestry.
Kurma —
Yeah, but Eric and Emma are Saxon names that have been in common use in England for a long time (“Emma” was written in 1816 or so, Eric Idle and Eric Clapton born in the 1940s, Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) born in 1901 or so). So the parallel isn’t precise — no Scandinavian-only names are mainstream American (Sven, Lars, etc.). Not that you won’t find them in Minnesota, but there’ll always be a Swede or Norwegian ancestry attached to them.
Kush — agreed re Greeks, but again, there are no non-Greeks in American named, say Vasilios or Giorgios. So, not mainstream first names. Agreed that religion is part of what divides India, and like I said I’ve never been. What are attitudes on this board towards the wall between India and Bangladesh? It got almost no media play here.
Bored — African-Americans are obviously a sui generis group in the American context. But noone immigrates here, if we’re being honest, to live in urban Detroit or Southeast Washington DC. They move here to one day live in a nice, peaceful, suburb. And I don’t think Sweden, for example, ever persecuted its Jews.
Ashvin — the site won’t come up for some reason, but you may have me on Isabella. It says that’s the 9th most common girl’s name in the U.S.? I’m going through and I don’t know a single one. Maybe mostly Hispanic?
Sakshi — I would give India 50-50 shot at existing with precisely the same territory in 2067 as it has today. You think that’s crazy? And you don’t think ethnicity would drive it?
You don’t know anything about India anyways, so I don’t see why your opinion should matter.
WhiteGuy,
Having a name like John or Jessica is definitely mainstream, but is not an essential part of being American even as perceived by white people… I do not think anyone considers Obama as non-American, either.
You are right to be worried, though. The American culture as you know it will not survive the new types of immigrants influences that are coming in now and will continue coming in large quantities in the future.
😀 too bad you do not know how to welcome change and participate in moulding it. I am glad I am on the side of the winning side here ;-).
Maya is an Indian name that is quite common in the US. I know several who are not Indian and it’s definitely not Anglo-Saxon or biblical.
Maybe I don’t, Sakshi, but wikipedia does:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_autonomist_and_secessionist_movements#United_States
This list of areas of countries that have secessionist movements, and India has 23, more than twice as many as any other country. I don’t know enough to know how serious they are (one of the secessionist movements listed for the US is for the “Republic of Vermont”), but some of them people are killing and dying for, as you know. I don’t think it’s outrageous to wonder if India can hold together as a nation for the next 60 years — and it’s not wrong for me to worry about the U.S. doing the same with an influx of immigration. Homogenous countries don’t split apart; multiethnic ones (sometimes!) do.
Laughing — yeah, I know! 😉 But let me be clear: I wouldn’t have wanted 1950’s Leave It To Beaver America to have lasted for my lifetime. Cultures have to change. But I do think we’ve gone too far in the opposite direction — I suspect lots of people on this board live in California, but not many live in Spanish-speaking barrios. Dig?
One reason Indian names are not likely to become common names in the US is because there is not a small set of names that are commonly used in India, like they are here. So even when people name their children with Indian names, they are unlikely to generate enough number of a single name for it to seep into the american lingo.
However, this does not mean that the American culture will not become more welcoming of Indian and other names.
WG,
Sweden did not begin to give its Jews legal and civil rights until 1838. This seems to have been a cautious, long-drawn out process. And, disturbingly, a prohibition on Jews holding political office in Sweden was only lifted in 1951. There were also large demonstrations in Sweden against Jewish immigration during the 30s.
Your point about neighbourhood choice is irrelevant. If American Culture is elastic enough to absorb the African-American influence (and you can’t tell me they don’t listen to jazz and hiphop in nice, peaceful suburbs, or watch Roots, or read Langston Hughes, or listen to MLK orate), then it’s elastic enough to absorb desis named Divya.
That’s a good point Laughing. There was sort of a hippie trend (maybe caused by the Beatles going to India) of giving white kids Indian names in the 1960s-70s, but I think it ended with LSD, and I can’t think of an Indian name that ’emerged’ as the frontrunner from that.
Bored: jazz definitely, hip-hop just teenagers pissing off their parents, Langston Hughes and MLK speeches are not my idea of a good time in the ‘burbs, sorry. Basketball yes, rap yes — whitey buys 3/4 of all rap albums — but no one over 25. No one who gets laid, anyway (except Eminem and, once upon a time, Vanilla Ice). And I assume you’re not arguing that whites and blacks have assimilated over the years, or are holidng up American white-black relations as your exhibit A? They were my exhibit A! Look how fraught those relations have been, then tell me how you think it’s going to help to add huge #s of Hispanics, South Asians, Africans, etc. into the mix.
I know the theory: whitey is racist and once we get America down to under 50% white, everyone will get along since there’ll be no dominant ethnic group around to be oppressive. Well, hooey. We’ve got lots of examples around the world of multiethnic societies, and the vast majority of them are brimming with racial conflict. Some of them split apart (U.S.S.R., Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Pakistan, Ethiopia, etc. On the horizon: Bolivia, Iraq, Canada…and if we keep heading down this road, perhaps the U.S.
WG and others: Isabella is the 9th most common baby girl’s name right now. So if you’re thinking and thinking and defending your position that you don’t know any Isabellas… think younger. Much younger.
It’s part of a current trend in choosing female names with extended “l” and “a” sounds, as compared to last decade’s trend of choosing names that ended in “n” sounds (Madison, Ashlyn) and the 1980s trend of names that were filled with strong consonants (Kristin, Amanda). This is a major gloss on the statistics, but look them up.
My name, btw, is neither Biblical nor Anglo-Saxon. Nor is it related to my somewhat dubious “ethnic” ancestry. It’s French ’cause my mom thought it was pretty. And it’s a French name shared by a lot of girls, even back in the day when I was born.
As to the comment about “white people built America like the Little Red Hen built her loaf of bread and now you all want to eat it” — um… there are so many things wrong with that statement that I don’t know where to begin. We could start by talking about the people who were actually doing the WORK during the first hundred years of post-1776 history.
Some of them split apart (U.S.S.R., Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Pakistan, Ethiopia, etc.
They did not split just because they were multi-ethnic.
They split because one or more group thought that their livelihood and women were in danger with being together. A lot of wars are about wealth and women. Some of your examples you cited they was disparity of wealth between groups, and in some fear of miscenagation.
Just read the history of lynching, KKK, or other nationalist groups
Redheaded,
Delving too deeply into U.S history is probably taking us off-topic, but the vast majority of the wealth blacks created (for whites, mostly) in the U.S. South was destroyed during the Civil War.
You don’t give us your name, but you’re right — there are a few French women’s names (not any men’s that I can think of) that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if a non-French-descended American girl/woman had them. Although now that I’ve said that, I can’t think of one. Michelle, definitely; but again, did that come via skipping to England first?
I’m going to name my kid Jose (not pronounced like José)….if it’s a boy. If it’s a girl, same thing, different spelling – she’ll be called “Joe’s”. Then I will proceed to arrange her marriage with a mainstream guy called Joe to make the prophecy come true – just like the prophecies of the prophet Isiah.
Not saying there weren’t other factors too, Kush, but all the countries I listed cleaved pretty cleanly along ethnic lines in the end.
“Homogenous countries don’t split apart”
korea did and it is far more homogenous than some of the other countries you mentioned. so did vietnam for awhile. the u.s. almost split when it was far more homogenous than it is now. so more ethnic homogeneity doesn’t necessarily ensure harmony.
No WG, your exhibit A was a fantasy notion of ‘American Culture’, built by and revolving around white Americans. You chose to ignore black American influence, and somewhat ironically, are lumping in Jews and Irish Catholics with ‘mainstream’ America. In fact, conservatives of your ilk would have been screaming against ‘Jewish influence’ and the ‘Papists’ once, all in the name of defending some abstract notion of ‘American Culture’.
Whether whites and blacks get along in general (and they do, much more so than forty-fifty years ago, no?) has nothing to do with whether America has in fact absorbed a great deal of black influence – as it has. Your personal notion of a ‘good time in the ‘burbs’ (paradox?) is, once again, irrelevant. If, despite enormous racial tensions, the mainstream culture can integrate such once-foreign elements, it can also integrate desi names and customs.
Btw, I suggest you not only put India but also Canada on your future travel agenda. Yes, I know, your life will be in danger from all the racial strife up here (put some hockey sticks, Tim Horton’s coffee and multicolored canucks on a dark street and you get…oh wait, you get a game of pickup). Still you might actually gain some substance to back up all your theorizing.
Yeah WhoseGod, but Germany got back together, and Korea will too one day soon. Why? Because they’re ethnically the same. The U.S. almost split…but it didn’t. If Mexicans take over the Southwest, the U.S will lose it for good, because it’ll be ethnically Mexican.
Not saying that all ethnically homogenous countries stay together, or that all multiethnic ones break up. But heterogeneity tends towards political instability, and homogeneity tends toward stability. You don’t dispute that I take it?
Bored: a great shock for white liberals in the 1970s was that, once a black middle class emerged, it had little interest in living with the white middle class. Instead, they preferred to live in black suburbs. This went totally against the integration ethic of the 1960s; in the end, the very fact of racial difference was enough to keep blacks out. I know the counterargument: blacks didn’t want to live around whites b/c of racism. But I grew up in a liberal, 90% white suburb with more desi families than black ones, and the few black families there were never, ever harassed in any way. No one would have stood for it. And yet, when I got older, one of the black wives in the neighborhood told my mom and dad that she wished she had raised her kids in a black suburb instead.
And I have been to Canada. Hmong gangs shootin’ up Alberta’s cities, baby! There is some Schadenfreude here, Canadians always lectured Americans on how superior they were, their cities were safe because they had strict gun laws. But what they didn’t have is lots of underperforming minorities. Now Toronto’s got that, and boy are the bullets flying!
By the way, Sakshi, if you’re still around: re that wikipedia page of secessionist movement I listed upthread, here it is again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_autonomist_and_secessionist_movements#India
Not only does India have more than twice as many secessionist regions as any other country (23), but 16 of those 23 have “rebel organizations” attached to them! Click through the links, some of those rebel groups sound pretty serious about it. As in, armed and shooting. So I think my 50-50 guess as to whether India will maintain its precise terrtorial integrity over the next 60 years looks maybe even a bit generous?
Michelle, Jacqueline, Cecile, Valerie, Marie, Jeanette (none of them mine, btw). I suppose you could say that Marie and Jeanette are Biblical.
The cotton fields may have burned but the fact that one group of people had another group of people growing their food, cooking their meals and washing their clothes for a hundred years gave them a lot of free time to develop power and influence. Again, a gloss. But any accomplishment has to be looked at in context.
I read the link, Majority of them are machete carrying jokers. Only two big secessionist issues are in India. The Kashmir and Assam ULFA(I am from Tamilnadu, and i haven’t even heard of the two listed there!). Rest of them are jokers. I think you are equating the secessionist movement to Al queda and Iraqi Sunni and Shia. India is different.
I’m going to backtrack – I apologize, I know everyone’s really enjoying the back and forth with “White Guy” here, but I just wanted to address the MD/HMF conversation.
I feel where MD is coming from, and I think it’s definitely useful to think about how different issues of privilege and advancement compete. You’re right – it is reductionist to pin everything on race, and you’re right that it’s problematic to lump regions and groups of people into all-encompassing stereotypes. That said, I think – given the institutional legacy and impact of race – it is completely fair game to examine things in a “racialized” context.
And Terrible,
Honestly, I don’t know if you’re a troll, or just a really offensive and nasty person. Whichever it is, I really don’t care. You are the one who put “white” before any mention I made towards racism, and I left this description off for very specific reasons… Namely because I wasn’t talking solely about white people. Further, my mention of associating “foreign names” with racism is because consistently assuming that someone’s name is foreign also implies that you believe that person is foreign. This creates an implicit divide between “non-foreign” (i.e. anglicized) and “foreign” names that is completely misleading and manufactured. I think if more people were race-conscious instead of tacitly accepting the inequality in the world around them, maybe we could make some broader steps towards equity (at least on one level) in this country. I am not going to apologize to you for my politics or my world view, and I honestly feel bad that you are depressed and unable to function in a world where people challenge your digs (since you haven’t really advanced anything that represents your own opinion save for your nasty comments about other people). And finally, I find generally everything you’ve said to be completely ridiculous and reductionist. You don’t know my life story, you don’t know what my family history is, and you have no idea how I grew up or what I experienced, so step off.
Most of the movements, if you read the article you pointed out carefully, do not want out of India, but are for creation of independent states inside India. That is like North Texas wanting to become a separate state separating from South Texas(as a totally random example). I haven’t even heard of most of these movements. The only serious secessionist movement that has any chance of success is in Kashmir, and even there I would give it a maximum 20% chance of success.
My personal twopence: I don’t know how long I’ll be in the US, but if by any chance I have kids here, I don’t care what name they take up once they grow up, or who they marry. That is their business. But if someone comes and tells me that I should name them x, I shall sure as hell name them y.
WG, TO is not in Alberta, it’s in Ontario. Secondly, our homicide rate is still less than a third of the American one.
Your argument about black resistance to integration does not address my point about the ability of American culture to absorb desi names/customs. Unfortunately, most people from most backgrounds are boring enough to want to live around people just like them – whether they’re rich, black, desi, artsy, conservative, disabled, old, young etc. This does not mean that the larger ‘culture’ which includes all of these sections can’t integrate elements from each. So whether Mr. Patel wants to live near Mr. Smith or not, he can still go to the grocery store and pick up both apple pie and tandoori paste (at least he can up here in the bullet-riddled North), catch a Bollywood flick at the AMC cinema, then go home and watch the Leafs. And Mr. Smith can name his baby Deepa, after the film director of Canada’s official entry to the Foreign Film category of the Oscars.
The name “Camille” is French too. ^__^
Enough=Good As Feast. I’m going to bed.
Yeah, you know best. After all you spent 12 minutes on an India-related webpage. Me, I was just born there and lived there for twenty-odd years, a lot of that time in areas where these groups are supposed to be active.
Goodbye WG.
Yes 🙂 That makes at least 2 French-named folks here at the mutiny!
Redheaded — yup, those are good. So that’s an exception to my rule: some French women’s names. Again, I’d be curious to know if any of them became popular in the U.S. via England, and why it’s limited to women’s names.
Sakshi —
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Liberation_Front_of_Tripura (11,000 people killed since 1989, trying to secede from India) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arunachal_Dragon_Force — “a violent secessionist movement…seeks to create an independent state” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Liberation_Front_of_Assam — violent and well-organized, seeks to create independent state http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalistan
Come on, you have to admit there’s a shot one of these will go the way of East Timor in the next 60 years. Concede the point, I wikipediaed you!
Not saying that some of these aren’t “machete carrying jokers,” but this argues against the claim made earlier that India is a harmonious, multicultural country whose chances of splitting apart among ethnic lines are trivial. That’s doesn’t look like the case to me or wiki.