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Add to women's names that seem to have popped out of nowhere: Athena. This is of course a very old name, but until recently I'd never seen it on any non-mythological women. And it's retroactive, too: these are not newborns, so it must have been around for a while. John Scalzi's teenage daughter is named Athena. And just recently we've met two different adult Athenas, roughly in their 20s, working in businesses we patronize.
Here's another idea: Rename US Army bases named for Confederate generals. What's curious is that the main reason the author offers for doing so is to cease dishonoring black soldiers who serve at them. Since the Army has been integrated for some 65 years now, one wonders why the idea hasn't come up before now, at least where I've noticed it (like women named Athena). But it seems that only recently has there been a shift from the idea that the USA and the CSA were the same team that just split up for a while, back to the original Northern notion that yes, the Confederates were traitors, pure and simple. I just hope that idea doesn't spread back to the Revolutionary War, because those guys were equal traitors, except that they won. "Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
Generally I'm not in favor of renaming things. The purpose of a name is to identify its bearer; if it changes, that interferes with the identification process. Of course, in specific cases there are reasons to overcome this. Entertainers often take stage names because their original name was awkward (John Deutschendorf) or the same as someone else's (James Stewart; no, this James Stewart). Or a name may simply have ceased to be appropriate (transsexuals with gender-based first names).
Or a name may have become too odious, and that brings us back to the Confederate generals. We could even combine two reasons: whenever I see, in a northern California newspaper, a reference to Fort Bragg, I have to check and see whether it means the military base in North Carolina, named for Braxton Bragg, or a town here in northern California by the same name (it's near Mendocino). If we changed the name of the Army base, that confusion would no longer arise. Unfortunately, Fort Bragg, California, is also named for Braxton Bragg, so maybe we should change that too.
Besides wiping the Confederacy from the honor of the map, because it supported slavery, there have been more wide-ranging moves to eliminate all slave-holders. Liverpool, England, was a center of the slave trade in the 18th century, and had many streets named for slave traders. In recent years the city council set out to identify and rename them all, but they had to draw the line at a lane apparently named for a particularly repugnant slave trader called James Penny, since its name had acquired an unrelated and wholly innocuous fame in the interim.
I quietly cheered when, back in 1986, the county council that includes Seattle voted to change its jurisdiction's name from King County (honoring William R. King) to King County (honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.), because here was an extremely clever way to give Dr. King a great honor rarely available these days (new counties are scarce) without having to change the stationery or the road signs. And at whose expense? In a long history of obscure Vice Presidents, William R. King was hands-down the most obscure Vice President the U.S. has ever had. He spent his entire 26 days - that's days - in office dying of tuberculosis, and never actually served as VP. He had previously served nearly thirty years in the U.S. Senate, but in his eulogies there, nobody could think of much to honor him for except the length of that service. If we're looking for someone to dispossess of a county's name, he's an excellent choice.
But in its resolution changing the eponym, did the King County Council say simply that Dr. King was simply a vastly more worthy and significant historical figure than VP King? No; Martin's worthiness was indeed extolled, and properly so; but William was condemned simply and sufficiently because he was a slave-owner. No other reason.
I dunno. There are at least four other counties in the state also named for slave-owners, like Thomas Jefferson and Lewis & Clark. Should their honorees be changed too? The whole state of Washington is named for a slave-owner. The citizens of King County can't escape equal responsibility for that. Practical politics may be ad hoc, but high moral causes carry an obligation to be consistent, and that can carry you into deeper waters than you intended.
Here's another idea: Rename US Army bases named for Confederate generals. What's curious is that the main reason the author offers for doing so is to cease dishonoring black soldiers who serve at them. Since the Army has been integrated for some 65 years now, one wonders why the idea hasn't come up before now, at least where I've noticed it (like women named Athena). But it seems that only recently has there been a shift from the idea that the USA and the CSA were the same team that just split up for a while, back to the original Northern notion that yes, the Confederates were traitors, pure and simple. I just hope that idea doesn't spread back to the Revolutionary War, because those guys were equal traitors, except that they won. "Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
Generally I'm not in favor of renaming things. The purpose of a name is to identify its bearer; if it changes, that interferes with the identification process. Of course, in specific cases there are reasons to overcome this. Entertainers often take stage names because their original name was awkward (John Deutschendorf) or the same as someone else's (James Stewart; no, this James Stewart). Or a name may simply have ceased to be appropriate (transsexuals with gender-based first names).
Or a name may have become too odious, and that brings us back to the Confederate generals. We could even combine two reasons: whenever I see, in a northern California newspaper, a reference to Fort Bragg, I have to check and see whether it means the military base in North Carolina, named for Braxton Bragg, or a town here in northern California by the same name (it's near Mendocino). If we changed the name of the Army base, that confusion would no longer arise. Unfortunately, Fort Bragg, California, is also named for Braxton Bragg, so maybe we should change that too.
Besides wiping the Confederacy from the honor of the map, because it supported slavery, there have been more wide-ranging moves to eliminate all slave-holders. Liverpool, England, was a center of the slave trade in the 18th century, and had many streets named for slave traders. In recent years the city council set out to identify and rename them all, but they had to draw the line at a lane apparently named for a particularly repugnant slave trader called James Penny, since its name had acquired an unrelated and wholly innocuous fame in the interim.
I quietly cheered when, back in 1986, the county council that includes Seattle voted to change its jurisdiction's name from King County (honoring William R. King) to King County (honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.), because here was an extremely clever way to give Dr. King a great honor rarely available these days (new counties are scarce) without having to change the stationery or the road signs. And at whose expense? In a long history of obscure Vice Presidents, William R. King was hands-down the most obscure Vice President the U.S. has ever had. He spent his entire 26 days - that's days - in office dying of tuberculosis, and never actually served as VP. He had previously served nearly thirty years in the U.S. Senate, but in his eulogies there, nobody could think of much to honor him for except the length of that service. If we're looking for someone to dispossess of a county's name, he's an excellent choice.
But in its resolution changing the eponym, did the King County Council say simply that Dr. King was simply a vastly more worthy and significant historical figure than VP King? No; Martin's worthiness was indeed extolled, and properly so; but William was condemned simply and sufficiently because he was a slave-owner. No other reason.
I dunno. There are at least four other counties in the state also named for slave-owners, like Thomas Jefferson and Lewis & Clark. Should their honorees be changed too? The whole state of Washington is named for a slave-owner. The citizens of King County can't escape equal responsibility for that. Practical politics may be ad hoc, but high moral causes carry an obligation to be consistent, and that can carry you into deeper waters than you intended.
