What about the thing where Basecamp leadership kept a list of “funny sounding foreign names” in the company?
That should go over really well with the university community where pretty much most of my professors and their TAs weren’t from America originally.
Also, just because a word appears frequently in a Wikipedia article doesn’t mean that the thing it is describing is that word. The word “debt” appears 11 times in Donald Trump’s Wikipedia article but that doesn’t mean he’s poor.
If you’re being serious about it somehow being wrong to find words funny, then do you have a problem with "absquatulate", "bowyangs", "collywobbles", "fartlek", "filibuster", "gongoozle", "hemidemisemiquaver", and "snollygoster“ [1] too? Presuming you don’t have a problem with words being inherently funny, why is it a surprise that some names happen to also be funny? Have you never found a name funny or amusing? How about when Ali G introduced Buzz Aldrin as Buzz Lightyear? Or when he referred to Boutros Boutros-Ghali as “Boutros Boutros Boutros Boutros-Ghali”. I found that silly and hilarious. How about when Homer refers to his “friend” Joey Jo Jo Junior Shabadoo [2], sorry, but again, it’s silly and hilarious.
One more example: on Family Fued [3] the person whose name was funny found it funny, his family found it funny, and the host/audience found it funny. Do you not laugh or at least see the humour in it?
Last one (promise). This Monty Python sketch [4] has been viewed 30M times on YouTube alone, it’s by the troupe of comedians that the python programming language is named after, and it’s all about people finding other people’s names hilarious.
Regarding “riots” you miss the point. Duke is upset DHH uses the word riot, but Wikipedia also does. So they should be equally upset with Wikipedia.
If your argument is that it’s okay for people bully others over their specifically non-Anglo name, you’ve lost me.
If your argument is that the non-Anglo nature of the “funny names” isn’t a form of xenophobia or ethnic discrimination, you lost me.
I’ve got certain Thanksgiving table members who have made fun of people named Patel for being named Patel and being Indian. That’s racist. That’s bigoted. Nobody at Basecamp was getting on the funny name list for having the last name Johnson (and that name even has a phallic connotation!)
I repeat: the funny name list was specifically non-Anglo.
I was bullied for my name as a kid. It wasn't a very common name and it and it was easily turned into a less than pleasant English word.
I would hate to think that middle school children never grow up and continue to be dickwads as founders of a sophisticated technology platform. Grow. The. Fuck. Up.
The workplace isn’t Family Feud. If people are persistently making fun of your name at work you’ve now got to decide if you fight it with HR or find another job. That’s called a hostile work environment. Family Feud is a semi-scripted TV game show where all the jokes and situations are pre-planned and edited for entertainment. If we are supposed to derive our workplace manners from television then your conclusion has to be that everything you see on Game of Thrones or The Handmaid’s Tale is work appropriate.
And again regarding the Python sketch, if your argument for acceptability in the workplace is a comedy troupe from 50 years ago, you’re gonna have a bad time. Why don’t you write an email to your CEO with the subject line “Biggus Dickus?” Right now. Like you said: it’s hilarious. I’ll make their day and get you a promotion. Let me know how that goes.
Wikipedia isn’t a Duke vendor, and the Wikipedia article for the George Floyd protests makes it very clear that most of the protests were peaceful. We don’t call hockey games “fights on ice” nor do we call American football “kickoff and extra point contest” because most of the game isn’t those things. That’s why calling broadly calling the George Floyd protests “riots” is disingenuous.
Did Fox News ever call the January 6th Capitol attack a riot?
> I repeat: the funny name list was specifically non-Anglo.
Hmm, when I google and click the most relevant result off the top couple, it says: "Many of the names were of American or European origin. But others were Asian, or African"
Are you sure you're right about the name list? I'll believe a better source if you have one...
> If people are persistently making fun of your name at work you’ve now got to decide if you fight it with HR or find another job. That’s called a hostile work environment.
That should go over really well with the university community where pretty much most of my professors and their TAs weren’t from America originally.
Also, just because a word appears frequently in a Wikipedia article doesn’t mean that the thing it is describing is that word. The word “debt” appears 11 times in Donald Trump’s Wikipedia article but that doesn’t mean he’s poor.