Outside his name

[Wilson Gray]

I'm not familiar with "call a person _outside of_ his name," but I am
familiar with a similar saying, "call a person _out (of)_ his name."
For me, it's usually a euphemism for "call a person a 'nigger' or,
sometimes, a 'motherfucker.'" But it can also be used for "call a
person by any kind of 'fighting words,'" as a joke. That is, the
person who says, "You called me out (of) my name!" may be joking, as I
would be, if someone addressed me as "William" instead of as "Wilson."

-Wilson

On Dec 5, 2007 6:39 PM, Alice Faber <faber at haskins.yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Alice Faber <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU>
> Organization: Haskins Laboratories
> Subject:      Outside his name
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'm surprised Larry didn't already post this, but there you are. This
> morning (12/5/07) on Mike and Mike in the Morning (ESPN radio), they had
> a segment with a new football analyst, a recently retired paper. One of
> the topics of discussion was the incident late in the Monday night
> Patriots-Ravens game, in which Ravens players allege that an on-field
> official repeatedly addressed one of them as "boy". (Both player and
> official are African-American.) The new analyst, Marcellus Wiley, an LA
> native who played at Columbia University prior to his 10-year NFL career
> (as this was his first appearance, he started by discussing his CV), is
> also African-American. In discussing the "boy" incident, he repeatedly
> used the expression "outside his name", which, from context meant "not
> by his name; by something other than his name". An example would be "if
> the official indeed called Rolle outside his name..."
> --
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> Alice Faber                                       faber at haskins.yale.edu
> Haskins Laboratories                            tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
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