What’s In A Name?
Don’t trust Facebook apps to tell you what your name means.
I have a very random and very specific pet peeve.
I absolutely hate those Facebook apps that people of a certain age and religious affiliation are so fond of using, the ones that allegedly tell you what your name means.
They seem to be attached to some kind of random generator that spits back bullshit answers that are usually 100% wrong. And the answers are usually saccharine “child of God” response.
And every time I see them, I have to stop myself from typing out a frenzied response about how stupid those apps are, and how it’s really easy to figure out what your name actually means.
As someone who’s trying to be less of a pedant, and definitely does not want to be that asshole, I keep myself from saying anything.
I guess there’s a lesson in there somewhere: if you see something you don’t like on the internet, you can scroll past it. But that’s not the point I’m trying to make here. (And I enjoy arguing on the internet too much. But I save it for important things.)
Anyway: it’s really easy to figure out your actual name meaning — just type <your name> + etymology into Google. One of the first things that will come up is either Wikipedia, Wiktionary, or the…
