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Help[Opinions] Whoa.
in reply to a message by Laura617
"Pack mentality"?
Parents choose names, by and large, based on what they like. Not so their kids will be popular or cool. Nor so their kids will fit in with the rich white crowd... or appear to be bluebloods ... or show off how well-educated they are .. or whatever else it could be that motivates people to like traditional, or well-used, or used by the well-to-do names. I mean, people just pick a name they like, and they think about whether their kid will be rejected based on the name -- and they base their judgment on whether or not they themselves, or their peers (people they relate to) would reject it. Beyond that, they can't truly know how it "fits in."
Parents who choose "dated" or non-trendy names in general are just as conformist, if not more so, in their own way, as parents who prefer trendy names.
What you perceive as a pack mentality is, I think, just the tendency of people in different subcultures to simultaneously like the same pool of names. There's a Makayla & Jaiden subculture who probably all thought they were original, just like they think it's somehow original to name a girl Tyler or Taylor. And there's also a subculture that chooses names from what they think of as more high-brow culture: the names used by their great great grandparents, or names of famous people from antique times, or names from literature, etc... they suffer trends too! I came here a couple years ago thinking I was the only one who could like a name like Violet. Ha! It's already been used by a celebrity and folks here just LURVE it. We're all under the same influences, and what comes out as our "taste" can look a lot like deliberate efforts to conform.
Both kinds of naming could cynically be seen as mere striving to impress those in one's own group... that doesn't apply more to the trendies than it does to the traditionalists.
- chazda, defensively because I can't think of a single name that doesn't appear to follow someone's trend nor bow to someone else's standard of good enough. Except the ones that make most all people (including me) say, "Please don't inflict that on a child." Which include both too-dated and too-trendy names.
Parents choose names, by and large, based on what they like. Not so their kids will be popular or cool. Nor so their kids will fit in with the rich white crowd... or appear to be bluebloods ... or show off how well-educated they are .. or whatever else it could be that motivates people to like traditional, or well-used, or used by the well-to-do names. I mean, people just pick a name they like, and they think about whether their kid will be rejected based on the name -- and they base their judgment on whether or not they themselves, or their peers (people they relate to) would reject it. Beyond that, they can't truly know how it "fits in."
Parents who choose "dated" or non-trendy names in general are just as conformist, if not more so, in their own way, as parents who prefer trendy names.
What you perceive as a pack mentality is, I think, just the tendency of people in different subcultures to simultaneously like the same pool of names. There's a Makayla & Jaiden subculture who probably all thought they were original, just like they think it's somehow original to name a girl Tyler or Taylor. And there's also a subculture that chooses names from what they think of as more high-brow culture: the names used by their great great grandparents, or names of famous people from antique times, or names from literature, etc... they suffer trends too! I came here a couple years ago thinking I was the only one who could like a name like Violet. Ha! It's already been used by a celebrity and folks here just LURVE it. We're all under the same influences, and what comes out as our "taste" can look a lot like deliberate efforts to conform.
Both kinds of naming could cynically be seen as mere striving to impress those in one's own group... that doesn't apply more to the trendies than it does to the traditionalists.
- chazda, defensively because I can't think of a single name that doesn't appear to follow someone's trend nor bow to someone else's standard of good enough. Except the ones that make most all people (including me) say, "Please don't inflict that on a child." Which include both too-dated and too-trendy names.
This message was edited 2/22/2006, 6:19 PM
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