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If you’re naming your own child, you have every right to be as biased as you want. I don’t think it makes you a bad person. It’s just human nature. If someone living in India would refrain from giving an English name because they think it makes the child sound uneducated, I don’t fault them for that at all.

This message was edited 1/25/2024, 5:36 PM

It's really difficult. I know people who won't use names because they're too old/snobby. Others won't use names that are too new or 'common.'

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I feel that people name their kids based on their own experiences and life. And then those names become associated with that class/group of people and the stereotypes surrounding that group.

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The only way to stop stereotyping names is to stop judging specific groups. Until that happens people are going to judge names. Josephine is lovely to some, annoying and old fashion to others. Crystal is lovely to some, trashy to others.

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The only thing to do is challenge your perception of names and groups, and to understand cultural differences. The more cultural understanding we have the fewer biases people will face.

One of the ironies of life is that in social science research one can often say things about large groups with more accuracy than one can say them about a particular individual. So one can certainly see how classism, racism, and sexism affect what names are popular or unpopular with certain groups in specific times and places, but it is much more difficult to get firm evidence on how they affect a particular individual parent and their name choice.

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By the way, though the three you mention certainly influence perceptions of names, the "ism" that is most obvious in how people have chosen names for the last century is ageism. Very few young parents want to give their child a name which in their mind is associated with gray hair and wrinkles, especially for female names. Many names people will tell you "sound ugly" actually are "ugly" to them because they associate them with the elderly, not because their sound is actually inherently unpleasant.

I think all those biases affect naming, but they affect it in different ways depending on the person. Some people have different biases for the same name, and some have the same bias but different perceptions of it. For example two people could agree that a certain name sounds 'middle-class', but one person thinks that's a good thing and the other thinks it's bad. Same with any perceptions like 'old-fashioned', 'rich', 'modern', 'rural', 'urban', etc.

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I think there's always some connection between preferences and prejudice. For example if I say "I don't like this name because it makes me think of a white suburban soccer mom", that implies that I dislike white suburban soccer moms (or at least think there's something about them that would make a name a bad choice).

I'm a bit unclear with your wuestions.