Joden

[Annette Karmiloff-Smith]

Dear Ken gulp Hyde!
One of my friends at school had the initial PIS and got teased no
end.  I think I should tell them and leave the decision to them.  By
the way, I am *not* a linguist but a psychologist.  Funnily enough,
this family wanted to call their son Juno but worried he'd be teased
having the name of a Greek Goddess so decided on Joden instead!  They
clearly like names beginning with J...  Guess he could just be Jo.
Thanks for all your comments,
Annette

At 10:36 am -0400 9/9/02, Kenneth Allen Hyde wrote:
>On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, Annette Karmiloff-Smith wrote:
>
>>  If there are psychotherapists out there, should I tell the parents or
>>  not?
>
>I'm not a psychotherapist, but as someone who has suffered an inordinate
>amount of teasing because of my name ("Hyde"), I would personally vote for
>warning the parents that it may become an issue years down the line.  At
>least that way, when/if it happens, the parents can't turn to you and say
>"You're a linguist! You could have warned us!"  Besides, if the child in
>question is a boy, he's going to have enough of a burden being called Jody
>(which despite a few exceptions is predominantly a feminine name).  I
>doubt if the possibility of multi-lingual playground teasing is ever going
>to equal that particular burden (assuming that he/she has playmates that
>are linguistically sophisticated enough to make the cross-language
>connections).
>
>Ken *gulp* Hyde
>
>Kenneth Allen Hyde     |  No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife
>Univ. of Delaware      |  between the shoulder blades will seriously
>Dept. of Linguistics   |  cramp his style  -- Old Jhereg proverb
>kenny at Udel.Edu         |  A mind is a terrible toy to waste! -- Me
>
>//www.ling.udel.edu/hyde/prof/

--
________________________________________________________________
Professor A.Karmiloff-Smith,
Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit,
Institute of Child Health,
30 Guilford Street,
London WC1N 1EH, U.K.
tel: 0207 905 2754
fax: 0207 242 7717
http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/units/ncdu/NDU_homepage.htm
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