“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet….”
Ah, Shakespeare, he certainly had a way with words, didn’t he?
And yes, no matter what you call a rose, it would still have the same smell. Moreover, we, society that is, consider a rose something magnificent not simply because of its smell, but because we have imbued a connotation about what a rose means. And not just the flower itself, but the colors of the rose also have a special meaning. (By the way, my wedding bouquet was all white roses.)
Meanwhile, society has a way of taking words and manipulating them over time. Of course, Shakespeare was the great language generator of his time. Our vocabulary today is richer because of the barriers he broke. Today his patois is part and parcel of our regalia. But back then, it was the generational contretemps we now call “slang.”
In fact, jargon is how each generation changes words and meanings plus how they express themselves. That is why when doing the crossword puzzle and the clue is “GenZ word for XXX,” I invariably need the online urban or slang dictionary. Not only am I not hip (which is not a GenZ word), I am unabashedly old.
Well not that old, except I really don’t know any of the major Hollywood starlets or the new music divas. But I’m also still not at the stage where I yell at them “whippersnappers to get off my lawn.” On the other hand, I am still waiting for a satisfactory explanation of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance and what it all meant. Except I get he and Drake don’t like each other. (By the way I didn’t understand one word he said during the entire performance, and couldn’t keep up with the close captioning either.)
Each generation needs to empower themselves with how they use words. They need to feel different, to challenge norms, to turn the world upside down and inside out. They need to reject what came before and seek out alternatives. I get that.
But one of the things that never changes is that words have meaning. They invoke thoughts and ideas. They are attached to concepts. How you use words projects who you are. How you use words exemplifies how the world should view you.
Except for swear words. Swear words are a different category. They can be offensive, insulting, demeaning, but sometimes they are right on target for how you feel. Scientists have also found that if you swear it means you are highly intelligent. Which is good because, I know I am not stupid, and when I get REALLY mad, my favorite go to is “fuck you.” Not sure how that is derogatory though, unless you see intercourse as something that is considered dirty or risque. I mean sex is many things, but it is not “dirty.” Porn, on the other hand, is dirty, demeaning, dehumanizing, and dispiriting. So maybe it’s in that context when we use the “eff” word.
Listen, when I was growing up, people did not swear. The worst you really heard was the word “damn.” So can you imagine the societal shock in the 1930s, when in the last scene in Gone with the Wind, Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Cue the smelling salts of all the matrons in the country.
But swearing, the use or none use has changed. I don’t know if it was the grit we saw nightly during Vietnam on the evening news. I don’t know if it was part of the counter revolution of the 60s in total that changed whether people used swear words, but I know that swearing has become part of society.
In fact, when my younger son was in college he took a literature course where the professor regularly used the word “c**t” to describe women (there was obviously something terribly wrong with that man), until one day a female student raised her hand and told the professor that if anyone ever called her that there would be a fight. I know this because my son’s aide told me what happened. In fact, the aide also told me that he didn’t know how the school even allowed the professor to use that word and remain a professor.
I don’t know how either, considering, that when this same son also told an off color joke in a script writing class, and that professor (different one from the literature guy) laughed, a female student filed a complaint. After being called on the carpet by the administration, the professor told my son he wasn’t allowed to tell those jokes anymore. The aide told me that it was actually a funny joke. No bad words. A little innuendo. Something that would have been normal to say even in mixed company not too many years ago. (My son has a very dry, and wry sense of humor.)
Words are the essence of who we are. They are the center of any civilization. When we understand, agree, on the meaning of words then the world moves as it should and society continues apace.
Names like words have import. What we name our children have a direct effect on their lives. Whether we like it or not. I think most people know this. It is why the majority of parents spend so much time trying to pick out the right name for the little unborn bundle of joy.
I will never understand the parents that have to be so different that they make up names for their child by eliding names together to come up with something no one else has. Listen. That is all fine and good if you want to be an iconoclast, but you need to think whether the child is going to get beat up on the playground as well. Life is difficult enough at times why make thinks untenable for your offspring.
Listen I don’t mean everyone has to have the name John or Jane. They are rather parochial versions of anglosaxon names of course, and the US has leapt into the new unknown with names as ethnically varied as its citizenship (my kvetching is not about this variety). I get it some parents want to be creative. Well maybe they should paint or do sculpture instead of fucking up their children’s future.
Now, of course, you also can’t be certain that even if you give your child a well know name that it wont be messed up either. My parents named me Elise. If you know Beethoven, you know the piece, Fur Elise, which I was named for. (It was such a popular name at the time I was born, that there were 3 Elises in my junior girl scout troop) Well in 7th grade, my idiot english teacher called me Elsie. At the time there was a mascot for a milk company called Elsie the cow. Needlesstosay, the 7th grade boys then mooed at me all year long. My nickname became Elsie MooMoo.
On the other hand, when I named my oldest son, I had a name I loved from the time I was 12 which is a decidedly Hebrew name and that is what we named him. Well, my FIL’s wife (my husband refused to call her his stepmother) carried on that I didn’t give him an American name. (Not that it was any of her business anyway.) In fact, both my in-laws got into the denigration act. Honestly, I didn’t care what they thought. It wasn’t up to either of them. And it wasn’t as if we don’t live in one of the most Jewish cities on the planet. But lo and behold, when they were on a plane and met a celebrity whose grandson had this same name it suddenly became American enough. (I never quite understood the chutzpah of some people.)
Just as an aside, Jewish Americans tend to have 2 names, an American name, usually starting with the same first letter of their Hebrew name (mine do not match), and a Hebrew name which they use for religious purposes. I wanted to stop that with my sons. My sons’ American and Jewish names match (for the most part anyway.)
A very cute little story- my parents lived next to an immigrant family, I can’t remember exactly which Asian nation they were from. One day their granddaughter was over. She was about 4 or 5 and playing outside. My mother asked her her name, and the child very wearily said, well I have 2 names. One in her family’s culture and one for America. She told my mother both of her names. She didn’t seem very happy about it at all. But then my mother told that she too has 2 names.
“Really?” the child replied.
“Yes, “ my mother said, and then told the little girl her 2 names.
The child was delighted. She ran to tell her family about the lady next door with 2 names, too.
America is such a funny place at times. We try to hold on to our heritage while at the same time we want to assimilate into whatever American culture happens to be.
In the end, names mean something. Names tell you who the family is and what their priorities are in life. Names point a child in a direction. They tell the child what the family expects of them. Some families use names handed down generation after generation. Some families use biblical based names. Some families have ethnic reasons for how they name their children.
Names, monikers, handles and tags are how we view ourselves. Like words they have meaning and have repercussions upon a person’s psyche for better or for worse. We need to also give our children leeway with their names, so that it doesn’t mark them in such a way that it stifles who they are actually meant to be.
Yes, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But when you hear the word “rose,” you know exactly what that means, too. There is no ambiguity, no matter the words given to sweet doomed Juliet.
IT IS DAY 569 OF THE HOSTAGES BEING STARVED AND HELD IN THE TERROR DUNGEONS OF GAZA 🎗️
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