Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id GAA10895 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 6 Jun 2001 06:27:01 +0100 Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 15:05:38 +0100 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Children's names Message-ID: <20010605150538.A1245@ii01.org> References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745EDB@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.15i In-Reply-To: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745EDB@inchna.stir.ac.uk>; from v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk on Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 01:31:12PM +0100 From: Robin Faichney <robin@ii01.org> X-RBL-Warning: (orbs.dorkslayers.com) 195.8.69.94 is listed by dorkslayers.com Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 01:31:12PM +0100, Vincent Campbell wrote:
> I have some Scots friends who are pretty nationalistic, and they're
> always going on about gaelic names, and the anglicisation (is that a word?)
> of them. For example, the Mac of MacRobert etc., actually means 'son of
> Robert', and daughters should be NicRobert (there may be a 'h' there as
> well). Anyway, one of my friends complained that because of English rule
> this Scots tradition had been suppressed. I pointed out that the tradition
> of naming kids as son of or daughter of whoever, actually stems from the
> Scandanavians who occupied much of Northern Scotland for long periods
> (Icelanders still use 'dottir' and 'son', for example), such that there
> wasn't much uniquely Scottish about that practice. That went down well, as
> you can imagine!
Either you don't know when your leg is being pulled, or you have some
rather stupid friends.
> >> Like you say, possible memetic subject there. Perhaps studying
> the trend
> >> for new names amongst African-Americans would be a good way in to
> finding
> >> their origins, rates of spreading, and mutation on the way. I
> bet someone's
> >> done this somewhere.
>
> <Probably. It seems rather an obvious research topic (though so do
> many,
> > in retrospect). But I wonder what, specifically, a memetic perspective
> > would add to any study of naming trends?>
> >
> Well, I still like to hope that memetics might answer the question
> of why name X spread and name Y didn't. Perhaps memetics isn't needed to do
> that, perhaps memetics can't answer such a question, I don't know at this
> time.
The short answer as to why name X is more popular is "because more people
like it". To dig any deeper than that surely would be for psychology and
allied trades. As I've said before, I don't see why memetics should ever
be able to explain any such specific issue better than disciplines such
as psychology. It can't offer new reasons, because it is nothing but
a repackaging of existing reasons. That repackaging is philosophically
interesting, but can't possibly be of any empirical significance.
-- Robin Faichney Get your Meta-Information from http://www.ii01.org (CAUTION: contains philosophy, may cause heads to spin)=============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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