{"id":10595,"date":"2014-11-03T10:36:35","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T14:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=10595"},"modified":"2017-07-25T11:42:01","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T15:42:01","slug":"baby-naming-issue-the-juan-pablo-jones-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2014\/11\/03\/baby-naming-issue-the-juan-pablo-jones-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: “The Juan-Pablo Jones Problem”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,
\nMy husband and I have been debating this particular baby-name quandary for years, and now that we’re relatively close to starting a family I’d really like some outside opinions. We agree that we would like to use family names for our children, but our preferences differ wildly. My husband would rather we gave our kids culture-spanning classics, whereas I’m drawn to heritage-specific names. For the record, our families have been in the US for one and three generations respectively, and our last name is his family’s Ellis Island adoption. His argument is that our overly common surname lends a comical effect to heritage choices (his go-to example is Juan-Pablo Jones, which I honestly don’t find that jarring!) He also thinks that trying to pull off an ethnic name rings of cultural-appropriation, even if that culture is historically our family’s. I think our surname justifies using a more daring (in this country at least) given name. Getting him to talk about it seriously has been like trying to put socks on a cat. He gets squirmy and distracted, and pulls the “we’ve still got time” card, when all I want is to have my hypothetical children’s names decided a good year in advance so that I can devote that corner of my brain to other things. Is that too much to ask, Swistle? But honestly, I’m not sure how to go about convincing him just yet. For one thing, what if his claims are valid? Am I so distracted by pretty, foreign-sounding names that I can’t see a potentially awkward situation in the making? I’d love to know your thoughts on pairing an ethnic family name with a run-of-the-mill surname. Are there any situations in which you think it should be avoided?<\/p>\n

Sincerely, H<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

It’s very likely your husband will be much more willing to discuss these issues when a baby is on the way. (Or, if he’s like Paul, sometime in the third trimester.) In the meantime, discussing them with others is EXACTLY what this blog is for.<\/p>\n

I think it’s unnecessary for him to bring cultural appropriation into it when what you’re discussing is using names FROM YOUR OWN CULTURES. It sounds as if his concern is that other people will THINK it’s cultural appropriation: that is, if someone didn’t realize your cultural background, they might think you shouldn’t have used the name. I am generally on the side of worrying what other people think and of taking into account the society we live in (I don’t want to give a child a name that will make people think badly of her or of us), but this doesn’t seem like an issue here. First\/last-name incompatibility could happen any time the parents didn’t come from the same cultural background, or any time a surname gets married out of usage. It seems like even (or especially<\/em>) people hyper-aware of cultural appropriation issues would also be aware that the current particular surname doesn’t tell the story of the family background.<\/p>\n

One possibility that may be more trouble than it’s worth is to go back to the family’s pre-Ellis-Island surname. But this doesn’t solve the problem if you want to use names that represent YOUR heritage. And I assume he doesn’t want to argue that only the surname branch of the family can be represented.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, matching the first name and surname can lead to another problem, which I’ve heard referred to as the “just off the boat” problem: Juan-Pablo Rodriguez might encounter more trouble in life than Juan-Pablo Jones. It SHOULDN’T be that way, but it can be.<\/p>\n

So far it sounds like I’m absolutely against your husband, but actually I see his point; it’s only that I think his arguments don’t fit or help his point. If I were him, I’d stick to saying that I just don’t like the way it sounds when the first name and surname have a cultural clash, or when a very unusual\/exotic first name is paired with a very plain\/common surname. I have a very Dutch surname, and combining it with, say, a very French or very Chinese first name, gives a combination I find comical\/jarring\/unpleasant. It’s not that I worry people will think I’m trying to steal from another culture (for example, let’s say my family’s heritage was French or Chinese, and I had taken my husband’s Dutch surname); it’s just that I don’t like the sound of it. And “not liking the sound of it” is a completely legitimate reason not to want a certain kind of baby name: there’s no need to escalate it beyond that.<\/p>\n

What I’d suggest, if you both would like to represent your family\/cultural backgrounds but he doesn’t like the way your favorites sound with the surname, is to use those names as middle names—perhaps with a culture-spanning family first name. I think if I were you, I’d offer this in the form of a compromise: you’ll put the names in the middle name position, but then you get to choose ones that sound even more culturally representative. For example, I love the Dutch name Thijs (pronounced Tice, to rhyme with ice), and it’s a name from Paul’s cultural background AND mine, and it fits culturally with our surname—but we didn’t want to use that as a first name in the United States, where it would cause no end of hassle. If I’d had my heart set on using it, it would have made a spectacular middle name.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Name update:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hi again Swistle!
\nI wrote you the “Juan-Pablo Jones Problem” letter a few years ago, and I’m pleased to report that we successfully named a baby with minimal injury to ourselves\/others! Yours and readers’ advice was very grounding, so thank you. I was really stirred up about “solving” the name at the time, but it was useful to be reminded that hearts, minds, and circumstances change once a baby is a reality. The news that we were expecting a girl coincided with a dear friend of ours falling ill, and despite all the grand declarations I made in my original email (calm down past self!) it became more important to us to honor her with a namesake than worry about the name clashing. We used our friend’s name in the middle and chose a name off the family tree for her first. And despite being a name derived from two different cultures, one of which is decidedly not ours, I can’t imagine our sweet 0ttili@ N@ida (pronounced Nye-ee-da) Jones as anyone but herself. I love her name in a way I don’t think I could have been if I’d stuck to my stipulations. She’s a reminder of our deep roots, and the most recent ones.
\nSincerely, H<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, My husband and I have been debating this particular baby-name quandary for years, and now that we’re relatively close to starting a family I’d really like some outside opinions. We agree that we would like to use family names for our children, but our preferences differ wildly. My husband would rather we gave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2KT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10595"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12851,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10595\/revisions\/12851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}