People may call themselves anything they please, although they cannot guarantee that the rest of the world will honor, tolerate, or even temper the snickering that outlandish name selections inspire. The aspirational world and the real world seldom align to suit every taste.
What happens when name selection verges into self-sabotage? Nothing good.
Witness the smug ignorance of subliterate parents who sentence their heirs to a lifetime of derision by christening them with first names and spelling them atrociously to boot. The resulting atrocities are not so much first names for innocent offspring as banners for their parents to wave as their expression of parental personality. Culturally, the net result is to proclaim to the world that the parent is a self-absorbed underachiever so starved of merit as to have to resort to branding a newborn with something atrocious enough to gain attention for the parent.
Examples abound, but why draw unnecessary attention to them to further torment the poor souls who had no say in their own mislabeling?
A Different Story
Team names take on a different character. Ostensibly, much thought goes into naming them to either honor a role model or evoke the winning spirit that the team aspires to emulate. Take the historical selection of “Redskins” as emblematic of the most celebrated warrior and leadership virtues that found an early admirer in George Washington.
André Billeaudeaux, himself a veteran and mature social scientist, has made this case for the Native American Guardians Association, time and time again. Witness such deep dives into the genesis and perpetuation of that name, not as the pejorative some low-resolution thinkers suggest in activist screeds, but as a source of pride:
Add, finally, two clips of André's interviews on this theme:
https://youtu.be/FS339W2P-kY?si=6OvuGXg1DELoJ2jh
and
https://youtu.be/st2wGk141Bc?feature=shared
What's In a Name?
From the standpoints of self-preservation and self-sabotage, Commander Billeaudeaux supplies us this compelling answer: everything.
