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Abstract
This article is concerned with how and why parent couples from different racial,
ethnic and faith backgrounds choose their childrens personal names? The limited
literature on the topic of names often focuses on outcomes, using birth name
registration data sets, rather than process. In particular, we consider the extent to
which the personal names that mixed couples give their children represent an
individualised taste, or reflect a form of collective affiliation to family, race, ethnicity
or faith. We place this discussion in the context of debates about the racial and faith
affiliation of mixed people, positing various forms of pro or post collective
identity. We draw on in-depth interview data to show that, in the case of mixed
couple parents, while most wanted names for their children that they liked, they also
wanted names that symbolised their childrens heritages. This could involve parents
in complicated practices concerning who was involved in naming the children and
what those names were. We conclude that, for a full understanding of naming
practices and the extent to which these are individualised or affiliative it is important
to address process, and that the processes we have identified for mixed parents
reveal the persistence of collective identity associated with race, ethnicity and faith
alongside elements of individualised taste and transcendence, as well as some
gendered features.
Introduction
What to call the new baby is a common pre-occupation for many soon-to-be
mothers and fathers, and can be of intense interest to wider family and friends.
Websites abound containing lists of names and their meanings to help parents
choose one for their child, often with advice such as the advantages and
drawbacks of bestowing an unusual name, or the importance of making sure
The Sociological Review, 56:1 (2008)
2008 The Authors. Journal compilation 2008 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review. Published by
Blackwell Publishing Inc., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, 02148,
USA.
Rosalind Edwards and Chamion Caballero
40 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation 2008 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review
Whats in a name?
of their childs family, racial, ethnic or religious heritage, and create dilemmas
between them or difficulties with wider family.
2008 The Authors. Journal compilation 2008 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 41
Rosalind Edwards and Chamion Caballero
girls for maternal kin are said to be not only a demonstration of affection and
respect, but also a way of perpetuating bonds, authority relations and resource
obligations down the generations. Some work, (also using birth registers of
names as with the outcomes literature), however, posits a shift away from
longstanding naming-for-kin customs towards patterns less dictated by sex or
lineage (see discussion in Furstenberg and Talvitie 1980). Further, in a wide-
ranging sociological study, again based on birth name registers, Stanley
Lieberson uses choice of childrens given names to make broader arguments
about the mechanisms that underlie changes in tastes and fashions, and cul-
tural change more generally (see also Bentley et al., 2004). His thesis is that,
rather than transformations in culture reflecting major social change (such as
seeing the turn to distinct African-American names in the US as a conse-
quence of the rise of Black Power Movement), culture is a surface where
shifts are forced by a variety of disparate internal taste mechanisms. There are,
for example, rachet effects in the form of steady variations on existing tastes,
and expansion from a taste stem (such as the shift from Tonya to Latonya as
a popular girls name among African-Americans that occurred over the 1970s
and 80s). These and other internal cultural processes mean that some inno-
vations created by external social change take hold while others do not. Of
particular relevance to our discussion here is Liebersons assertion that names
were not always primarily a matter of taste, following custom rather than
liking, but there has been rapid change in this respect since the early 20th
century as a result of urbanisation and individualism speeding up the effects of
the internal process mechanisms under the cultural surface.
A shift from custom to taste is also said to apply to religious names (at least
among White western populations), which can overlap with kin-naming con-
ventions. In her historical study of naming children in the Puritan-Yankee
world, Gloria Main concludes that the shift in patterns she identifies in the
mid-18th century: reveals the emergence of a movement towards the more
individualistic, child-centred naming that would eventually reign supreme
(Main, 1996, p. 14). This gives deep roots to the individualisation thesis as it
links to the asserted decline in traditional naming patterns (Bauman, 2000;
Beck, 2000; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995; Giddens, 1991, 1992; Weeks,
1995, 2007). The concept of individualisation claims that peoples lives have
become less constrained by tradition and more subject to individual choice.
Given life pathways, categories and hierarchies are undercut and undermined;
social forms and identities become disembedded from their established bases
and freed up, creating new commonalities in the context of globalised cultures.
Identity becomes subject to reflexivity, characterised by contingent choice
within a multiplicity of frameworks for who and what a person can be. As
people feel more responsible for their project of the self and the search for
self-fulfilment, they are less likely to follow the traditional life pathways laid
down by their forebears, more likely to seek egalitarianism rather than author-
ity relations, and indeed are more embedded in friendships and families of
choice rather than families of fate.
42 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation 2008 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review
Whats in a name?
Our focus on how and why parents in mixed relationships, from different
racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds, choose personal names for their children
occurs in the context where some analyses the 2001 UK Census indicated that
the population who identified as Mixed6 is now the third largest and one of
the fastest growing ethnic groups (Salt and Rees, 2006; for another interpre-
tation see Simpson and Finney, 2007), half (50%) of whom are under the age
of 16, with over half (55%) of these dependent children having married or
cohabiting parents (Murphy, 2006). There are also increasing trends in mar-
riage and cohabitation across religious boundaries (for example, Graham
et al., 2007; Morgan et al., 1996). Transcendent individualisation or decisions
around collective affiliation in naming children where couple parents have
different heritages thus may form a growing issue.
Whether individualised or affiliative names are given by parents to their
Mixed children might also be regarded as of interest in the light of longstand-
ing assertions that the children of mixed relationships are consigned to the
marginal and tragic between two worlds status (eg Stonequist, 1937), most
recently restated in remarks by the Chair of the Commission for Equality and
Human Rights, Trevor Phillips, about identity stripping children who grow
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Rosalind Edwards and Chamion Caballero
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Whats in a name?
they take (albeit in the US context a mix of both faiths is often championed:
Gruzen, 2001; Hawxhurst, 1998; Lerner, 1999; Yob, 1998). The recurring ques-
tion as to whether, in naming their children, parents show individualistic
choice or reflect a form of collective affiliation, in this case to religion or
religions and any overlap with kinship and race or ethnicity, remains pertinent.
Our study
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Rosalind Edwards and Chamion Caballero
Much of the work on children names is not interested in who actually names
a child (though Furstenberg and Talvitie, 1980, provide some exception), and
where this is referred to it seems to be assumed that, with coupled parents at
least, it is the mother and father together who choose them. (This is perhaps
based on authors own experiences see prologue in Lieberson, 2000 discuss-
ing his curiosity about the name he and his wife chose for their daughter.)
Many parents did refer to we in discussing naming their children. For
example, Susan and Lesley are a White British couple. Susan is from a Chris-
tian background, while Lesley is Jewish and the birth mother of one their
children, Joseph. The other, Hayley, is adopted and brought her name with her.
They decided to bring up their children mainly as Jewish but also with a
Christian input, though over the course of time the latter faith had taken far
more of a back seat than they originally envisaged. Susan described choosing
Josephs name:
I think Lesley was quite pleased that it was a Jewish name, but it was a name
that we chose together. We both really liked Joseph. Yeah, because actually if
it was a girl it was going to be Sarah. They were very Jewish names that we
both liked.
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Whats in a name?
In some cases the we choice could be augmented by the choice of the parent
who had most expertise in the type of name being decided upon. Jinglei is
originally from China, married to Brian, a White British man. Neither practise
a religion.They have two children who have English names, Boyd and Marilyn.
Whilst bringing up their children to have a sense of both their racial and ethnic
heritages was important to Jinglei and Brian, it is no longer a major concern
for them; coping with their childrens difference in terms of learning difficul-
ties has become the main focus of their parenting. Nonetheless, as a means of
reflecting the other side of their heritage, the children have alternative
Chinese names, which Jinglei took responsibility for choosing:
We choose together for English names and then I choose for their Chinese
names. My sons name, I spoke to my Dad. My Dad said it is good. They
picked the name for Boyd. For Marilyn, a simple name, its nice. We often say
it as well.
I was very keen to have Old Testament names. And again I was terribly keen
that they [her son and daughter] should have my surname because I suppose
you could say its a Jewish surname . . . We struggled to find a boys name we
both liked. And I actually always really liked the name Isaac. And when I
suggested that it was like Oh no, anything but that, not Isaac! And we went
through them all, Jonathan and Daniel and, you know, all the biblical ones.
And finally I think we decided on Nathan . . . You know, it wasnt a name that
I desperately liked, it was more it was the only one we could find in common.
So then, when he was born Andrew said Actually I dont like Nathan! This
was after he was born. So I was like Okay, what do you like? Again we were
just restricting ourselves to biblical names. And my father of course had just
died and my fathers middle name was Benjamin, so what about that? No,
no, no. And in fact Isaacs middle name is Benjamin. And literally we were
running out of time, however long that thing is before you have to register
them. And so I came back and said What about Isaac if we cant come up
with anything better? Anyway he just agreed to Isaac. You know, there were
various reasons why he didnt want the other ones so he just in the end
succumbed. And I was rather pleased because I got my own way!
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Rosalind Edwards and Chamion Caballero
Other of the accounts we give in subsequent sections also seem to imply that
choice of childrens names was driven by one parent more than the other (see
discussions of Vicky, Nicola and Leo, and Jamila and Mike). In some cases, the
fact that it was one parents choice only was more explicit and straightforward.
Hasan is originally from Pakistan and a practising Muslim, and his wife
Maryam is a White British woman who converted to Islam upon marrying him.
They have three sons Dalil, Bilal and Sahil who they are bringing up as
Muslims with a British Pakistani ethnic identity. Hasan asserted:
The first two, the big one and the middle one, I named them. She wanted to
name the little one so I gave her the choice.
Hasans mention of handing over of the choice of their youngest sons name to
Maryam raises the issue that some gendered cultural traditions place the
naming of children with the father, or indeed with other family members, often
a grandfather. In some cases, this generational involvement was accomplished
relatively smoothly. In other cases, it raised difficulties.
Jaclyn and Kojo are a Black Jamaican and Black Ghanaian couple who are
both non-practising Christians. Jaclyn described how she had worked along-
side Kojo to facilitate Ghanaian traditions in the naming of their daughter,
Jasmine, who is being brought up with recognition of both her ethnic heritages
alongside a pan-African racial affiliation:
I think this is where you go back to Ghana in terms of rituals, and when
Jasmine was born its customary that you name the child, so she had to be
named and the father has to choose a name. A lot of Caribbean women
involved with African men, they say No. They may put their foot down and
say No, Im not doing it. But I worked alongside him and said Yes, lets
name her. So shes not only got the name Jasmine but shes got two Ghana-
ian names, which is named after his sister.
In contrast, Paul and Katy both discussed difficulties around the same tradi-
tions. Paul is Black Ghanaian and has a Christian background, while Katy is of
White British and South African Jewish parentage, now an atheist. They are
bringing up their three children, Alexa, Zara and Ethan, with a sense of both
their racial and ethnic heritages, but this has limits. As well as refusing to have
their children christened, as Pauls family would have preferred, they also
transgressed Ghanaian naming customs. Their accounts both give a unified
we position in describing this, but have slightly different stresses in them:
My dad would have preferred to either have named the children in accor-
dance with a sort of family tradition, which Im not exactly clear what that
is . . . I think, yes, theres normally a naming ceremony . . . I think my dad
would have liked to have named our children but I think he would have liked
to have chosen the names as well . . . but, you know, our, not really a
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Whats in a name?
concession but, you know, each of the children has got as their middle name
the Ghanaian day name.11
(Paul)
Pauls father was quite upset when we had the children because apparently
the tradition, which Paul didnt know, was that the father, his father, should
choose our childrens names, and we didnt know that, and we didnt really
want him to do that . . . And that was a bit of a clash because I think in their
culture you would totally respect your elders, and Paul wasnt respecting his
dad by not doing that. So that wasnt very popular.
(Katy)
Katy stressed far more of a culture clash between individualised and affilia-
tive involvement in bestowing names than Paul did in his account. We return
to these sorts of inter-generational difficulties later.
Zoes experience, however, provides an exception to the predominant gen-
dered cultural traditions discussed by our interviewees. Her family originated
from Malta and she was a practising Catholic. Her husband, Dave, was White
British and had converted to Catholicism (from nominal Church of England)
before marrying Zoe. Their son, Nathan, was being brought up as a practising
Catholic, and Zoe also wanted him to have a strong sense of his Maltese
heritage. Zoe had faced a difficult situation in naming Nathan, in the form of
her mother-in-laws expectations:
I mean when she found out I was pregnant, she was really pleased and she
wanted to name Nathan. You know, regardless of boy or girl, she said I want
to name your child. And I said no. I said, he is our child and we will name
him . . . And I have always been polite to her, I have never been rude to her.
Because I think it is [Dave]s mum . . . I mean, Dave, with the name, he said
no mum. You know, he was in agreement with me. So I let Dave do it. I think
it is his mother and he should be able to go to her with whatever problems
and sort it out with her.
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Rosalind Edwards and Chamion Caballero
full run of names given (including middle names) is part of this. We explore
these issues of individual taste within collective parameters further below.
[Nabilias] got an African name! . . . I dont know what African, whether its
Swahili or I heard it on the television and liked it. And my sons Aled, which
is Welsh.
Nicola, whose own ethnic mix and mixed couple relationship was noted
above in discussing our sample, was asked how her daughters name of Nita
was decided upon:
I read [name of author and book], and the name just stuck. But obviously
because of my Asian background as well I was quite pleased to have it.
Although my Pakistani family tell me that its not really a name because they
are Muslim, you see, whereas Nita isnt a recognised Muslim name . . . Her
middle name is iere,12 which apparently is the Amerindian name, the pre-
Columbus name for Trinidad.
Thus, although popular culture acted as a source of Nitas first name, both that
and her middle name are reflections of parts of the mixed ethnic affiliation that
Nicola and Leo want to pass on to her albeit that Nicola did not get it
completely right in the case of Nitas first name (we return to the issue of
getting it wrong in naming children below). Nitas middle name was chosen by
Leo, another illustration of the parent whose background is being signalled
through naming making the choice (see above).
Yvonne is Black British and her husband, Stefano, is of White British-
Italian parentage. Both are born-again Christians. They have a son from
Yvonnes previous relationship, with a name that reflects his biological fathers
African heritage, and two sons from their marriage. They are bringing up their
children primarily as Christians, with some recognition of their racial and
ethnic backgrounds. Both of their biological sons names Rabsario and
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Whats in a name?
Zander have biblical origins, reflecting their beliefs, but have been adapted
to include their Italian heritage, as Yvonne explained:
Rabsarios name is biblical and it comes from Rabsaria, but with the male
and female and Italian names, if it was a boy, we made it to o so it became
Rabsario.13 And hes got a typical Italian middle name, Alberto. But my dads
name is Alberto. Hes a black man from Kingston and his name is Alberto!
So we gave him that middle name . . . Zander is from [a saint] but its spelt
with a z instead of an x. But thats also biblical, well Christian not
biblical . . .[Its nice to have a name] of some significance.
Carmens father was an only son. He had one or two sisters and then he had
four daughters, so the family name is basically dying out with him. And
Carmen has kept her name. So Gias name is the first three letters of Carmens
surname. And of course its an unusual name, which was important. Unusual,
but one that people would still know and had some meaning . . .[My sons]
full name is Marco Patrick Kaluwitharana. Marco was Carmens paternal
grandfather, Patrick was her maternal grandfather and Kaluwitharana was of
course my paternal grandfather. So he has a heavy burden which weve laid
on him.
In a similar way, Daniel described a run of names for his children that denotes
racial/ethnic and religious affiliation. He himself is mixed both in terms of
ethnicity and faith, with White British and Polish, and Christian and Jewish
parentage. His wife, Meena, is of Sikh Indian origin. They are endeavouring to
provide their daughter and son Heera and Amar with a sense of being
ethnically cosmopolitan, able to fit in anywhere, and to know about a range of
religions but not to feel that they have to follow a particular one. Nonetheless
the childrens full names denote specific aspects of their heritage:
The fact theyve got Sikh first names and theyve also both got hes got
Singh, shes got Kaur as middle names, although they have also got English
middle names too. And then theyve got this weird surname which comes
from my family. I say thats because it was Polish and then they tried to
Anglicise it, so it became unrecognisable.
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Rosalind Edwards and Chamion Caballero
After Kiran was born it just started to go a bit downwards. We called him
Kiran. We called him Imran at first which is a Pakistani Muslim name. And
Chloe said she felt a bit odd calling him a Muslim Christian14 name and a
surname, and I went fair enough, yeah, okay. So we changed it. We changed
the name to call him Kieran. And that caused trouble with my folks because
suddenly wed given him a Western name, oh, hold on a second, you said you
were Muslim but youre not that. And then we spelt it without an e which I
only later realised is actually worse. Because we tried to give it an Asian
spelling but actually given it a Hindu spelling, which is even worse. It would
have been easier if it had been a Christian name than a Hindu name . . . And
it is still an issue cos they [his parents] call him Imran . . . And every now and
again my dad used to get pissed off that people would call him Kiran, and my
elder brother and his wife have got their kids to call him Kiran Imran, so it
kind of makes my dad feel a bit better about it.
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Whats in a name?
[They didnt like the names because] my mum is very English and my dad
just called them nicknames.
(Yvonne)
As discussed above, Daniel and Meena had given their children names that
reflected her Indian origin. Meena referred to the way that her father-in-law
had made a couple of jokes about Amar, you know, and said oh, little Abdul,
that sort of thing. Indeed, some years on from having named her children, she
now also had concerns about how her childrens names might put them at risk
of racism. Her comments in this respect also reflect her and Daniels desire to
position their children as ethnically cosmopolitan (see above):
Children themselves, as they grew older, might also feel that the minority
ethnic or faith affiliation signified in their given name singled them out from
their peers. This obviously depended on where they lived. While many of the
parents in our sample reside in areas that the ONS Area Level Classification
categorises as multicultural metropolitan, Samir and Christine live in a small
village where Samir and their children Leila, Inaya and Faisal stand out as
the only non-White people. Samir is originally from Morocco and a Muslim,
Christine is White British and, while she has not converted to Islam, is happy
to bring up the children in the Muslim faith, as well as to know about their
Moroccan and British heritages. Both, however, want these affiliations to
involve a sense of choice rather than compulsion. Christine had agreed on
Arabic names for their children because she thought them beautiful, but
Samir was now concerned about how the children felt. Asked if his children
had ever experienced any prejudice, he replied:
Their names, thats all they told me. Oh, people cant pronounce our names
or why was I called Inaya, no one knows the name Inaya. Thats what they
say.
Perhaps those mothers and fathers who bestowed minority racial and ethnic
affiliative names as alternative or middle names, rather than the primary
given name, had such concerns about the reactions of wider society in the back
of their minds.
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Rosalind Edwards and Chamion Caballero
In contrast, Jamila, Mike and their three children live in a diverse multi-
cultural metropolitan area, and their childrens feelings about their names are
quite different to Christine and Samirs children. Jamila is British Asian from
a Kenyan Indian background, while Mike is White British and takes an accept-
ing but bemused attitude to Jamila bringing up their children as practising
Muslims. Their accounts of naming their eldest son differ somewhat. Mike
presented a we approach to the ethnic and kinship associations of the name:
When he was born we werent mixing with any of her family, her family had
nothing to do with Jam then. That was a difficult time that she was going
through, and so of course when he was born we gave him an English name,
Kevin. Kevin is his official name [on his birth certificate]. And he was named
after my granddad . . . Its Kevin William my middle name is William
Kevin William Green.
Jamila, however, stressed the way in which her affiliative preferences were
overridden by Mike and his wider family:
My family wasnt talking to me or anything like that, and when I had the baby
I wanted to name him Kareem, but it was no, thats an Indian name, you cant
have that, were calling him Kevin . . . Because my family wasnt talking to
me and I was sort of being bullied by his family. When he was born I was just
so messed up in my head.
While Mike and the wider Green family continued to call their son Kevin,
Jamila, their other children and Jamilas now reconciled family, call him
Kareem. And Kevin/Kareem had taken matters into his own hands, preferring
to be known as Kareem at school too. Given her own inclination, Jamila was
supportive of this, citing the importance of Kareems own choice and ability to
cope with two different names:
Hes used to [being called two different names] now. Hes so well adjusted to
it from being tiny, certain people call me Kareem and certain people
dont . . . I said to Mike, thats his choice, if thats what he wants to do then
he will do it . . . And Mike is fine with it now.
Mike, however, obviously still found it difficult to come to terms with his sons
decision, with its perceived rejection of his own affiliation (albeit Kareem still
had Mikes middle and family names):
That has been very difficult for me. Especially now that he is at school and he
wants to be known as Kareem. He has told everybody at school, all his friends
call him Kareem. And when his friends come round here and I call him
Kevin, they are all saying why is your dad calling you Kevin? He wants to be
known as Kareem. That has been the most difficult thing for me.
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Whats in a name?
Kareems preference for his personal name, and its signaling of another side of
his collective kinship, ethnic and religious identification, was made in the
context of being just one of several with an Asian name at his school.
The different experiences of Samir and Christines and Mike and Jamilas
children each reveal aspects of the continued significance that the local can
have for people, in the face of more universalist assertions about the globalised
lives and cultures that are part of their parents relationship and their own
mixedness.
Conclusion
We have been concerned with how and why parents choose names for their
children, especially whether this process represents an individualistic choice
or reflects forms of collective affinity to family, race, ethnicity or faith? This
question arises in the context of a limited literature on the topic but one that
suggests that naming practices have shifted away from traditional custom
towards individualised taste, and debates about the implications of racial and
to a lesser extent faith categorisations and affiliations for mixed people
especially.
Our particular focus has been on parent couples who are from different
racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds, and we do not suggest that our findings
can be extrapolated to the wider population in the UK, especially in the
context of very little literature on the topic. Nonetheless, it is interesting that,
rather than seeking to transcend their childrens specific mixed background
and avoiding which side dilemmas through individualistic choice of personal
or given name, for the most part denoting collective affinity is still of signifi-
cance for many of the parents in our sample alongside taste. While most
parents wanted names for their children that they liked, and could draw on
popular culture, or adapt or construct names in an idiosyncratic fashion, they
also wanted names that symbolised their childrens heritages. A common
means of acknowledging naming customs, and of symbolising their childrens
mixed heritages and indeed their own connection to their children, was for
parents to give a run of personal names reflecting each aspect of their back-
grounds. Which name was first, however, could cause problems. Not only, in
some cases, did parents feel that their principal given name choice was not well
received by one side of their wider family, but depending on the diversity or
otherwise of the area where people lived where minority ethnic or faith
names were primary they could later experience concerns about how this
positioned their children in wider society and in particular might intensify the
risk of prejudice.
It would seem that postulations about the openness and contingency of
social life, and disembedding dynamics inherent in contemporary society do
not have full hold, at least when it comes to parent couples in mixed relation-
ships naming their children. Rather, in terms of the debates about the identity
2008 The Authors. Journal compilation 2008 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 55
Rosalind Edwards and Chamion Caballero
of mixed race and faith children, there is a complex and sometimes difficult
pathway being carved out between pro-race and faith and kinship and
post approaches, whereby traditional boundaries, categories and customs are
being transcended at the same time as they retain salience and effect. This is
more akin to critical ideas about individualised reflexivity, choice and taste
being harnessed to re-embed longstanding categories and divisions in recon-
figured ways. These arguments, most notably expounded in relation to gender
and sexuality (Adkins, 1995, 2002; Heaphy, 2007), maintain that difference, and
the processes and hierarchies of power associated with it, still shape and
(re)limit peoples sense of who they are and of belonging. Moreover, in the
case of English kinship at least (Strathern, 1992), aspects of individualisation
itself can be understood as traditional, constantly reproduced in new or
reinvented forms (see also Thompson, 1996 more generally on tradition).
While the majority of parents presented a we portrayal of who chose their
childrens personal names, their discussions sometimes show that one parent
had far more influence than the other where a name was to reflect their
particular racial, ethnic or faith affiliation. Further, in some cases traditional
and gendered convention or expectation indicated that the father or a grand-
parent chose a childs name, or that a particular name should be given. In the
case of fathers and grandfathers, parents were engaging with the weight of
institutionalised custom, but mothers and grandmothers claims to name chil-
dren seem associated with more fragile kinship bases. Bucking these conven-
tions could cause difficulties in inter-generational relationships, and parents
often tried to avoid this where they could (albeit they sometimes mistakenly
made inappropriate decisions).
The complex collective affinity aspects of naming children that we have
identified as influential alongside individual taste in the personal names that
parents (or other family members) bestow is likely not to be evident in
research that relies simply on birth name registration records. While it is
important to identify overall trends, we suggest that a full understanding of
naming practices and what this says about the society that we live in can
only be gained through also asking parents about the process behind their
choice of their childrens names.
The personal names that parents (and others involved) give their children
represent a moment in time, at the start of a childs life. They symbolise
parents hopes and aspirations for who their children are and will be, to whom
and what they are connected, as well sometimes as what they hope will be left
aside. As we have noted in discussing our interviewees, life did not always pan
out as intended at that moment of naming, and childrens given birth names
did not always reflect the ways that mothers and fathers were currently nego-
tiating issues of difference and belonging in bringing up their children as they
grew older. Nonetheless, the complex collective affinity aspects of naming
children that our research identifies as influential alongside personal taste tells
us something about the society in which parent couples from different racial,
ethnic and faith backgrounds hope to live and raise their children one in
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Whats in a name?
which simple boundaries on the basis of race, ethnicity and faith can be
transcended at the same time as collective belonging is also valued.
Notes
References
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