Ledasha redux

[David A. Daniel]

The first of these blogs mentions that while punctuation in names is on the
rise, it would be stripped out of data bases, so that Le-a would be listed
simply as Lea. This no-punctuation or accents policy was the bane of a
friend of mine as far back as the 1960's. Her first name was Noné (accent on
the e and pronounced no-nay). But when dealing with anything involving a
form or a db, it would of course show as First Name: None. Try spending your
life explaining that one to bureaucrats...
DAD


____________________________________________
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Benjamin Zimmer
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 3:35 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Ledasha redux



Laura Wattenberg of The Baby Name Wizard has a three-part blog post on a
topic we've discussed in the past: how "many familiar 'urban legend' names
[e.g., "Ledasha" spelled "Le-a"] serve as proxies for talking about race."

http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2009/10/ledasha-legends-and-race-part
-one
http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2009/10/ledasha-legends-and-race-part
-two
http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2009/10/ledasha-legends-and-race-part
-three-of-three


--Ben Zimmer

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org