No more "Christian name, sir?" in Kent, UK

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, Pope St. Victor I, 186 or 189 to199 - alleged by Ebony magazine
to have been black; impossible to know whether he was in the
contemporary sense, since the American concept of "black" as a "race"
didn't exist in the 150's CE - pretty much christianized the name,
"Victor," long ago.

-Wilson

On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 12:36 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: No more "Christian name, sir?" in Kent, UK
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Let's see... We seem to be in a similar boat with the lineage/secular
> "problem". I would me amused but also mildly offended by someone asking
> for my Christian name. OK, not offended, but certainly annoyed. I find
> pervasive use of AD and BC more offensive, especially when the Texas
> school board tried to impose it on national textbooks--not so much
> specifically because of the implication, but because people tend to
> repeat mindless drivel without even considering the implications. (CE
> and BCE do just fine--and, yes, I am absolutely offended by the Texas
> imposition.)
>
> Asking for first name might discriminate against Billy Joe Bob--or Gian
> Carlo or Billy Bob or Jean-Francois. As you point out, given name
> demands would lose many an actor in their 60s and 70s (not to mention a
> horde of dead ones and all the African-American sports figures who
> decided to become Muslim), and a few other people who changed their
> official or public persona or use their nicknames (any recollections of
> Boom-Boom Mancini? What /was/ his first name?). "Forename" sounds like
> something that needs a Victorian euphemism... Well, we just might have
> to revert to that 800 year old tradition of just asking, "So, what do
> they call you?" Oh, wait, there is one more left--what is your /legal/
> name? Haven't heard this one in a while and it does tend to produce the
> /full/ name rather than just the "given" one, so it's not equivalent,
> but still...
>
>     VS-)
>
> On 3/27/2010 9:59 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> If "prénom" is good enough for the French (as I
>> recall from filling out all those cartes
>> d'identité), it should be good enough for us.
>> The problem is that "forename" does sound a bit
>> odd, and would probably lead to comments like "I
>> only have three".  There's always "first name",
>> which is perhaps more accurate than either
>> "Christian" or "given" name for the likes of
>> Tiger Woods, Mark Twain, or Cary Grant, depending
>> on the meaning of "given".
>>
>> As a non-Christian (by both lineage and
>> (non-)belief), I do find "Christian name" a bit
>> off-putting, more so than the relatively opaque
>> "BC" and "AD" for dates, which I know others
>> eschew.  (I guess opacifying "Before Christ" and
>> "Anno Domini" to ease the discomfort of
>> non-believers was an early instance of the "KFC"
>> model).
>>
>> LH
>>
>>
>
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--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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