What’s In A Name?

Get out of my way, I have opinions to unleash!

I have said it before on here, and endlessly repeat it out loud in real life, that I disagree with Shakespeare! He seemed to be of the opinion (or one of his characters was of the opinion, more accurately) that the intrinsic quality of a thing is unchanged by the names we attach to it. Famously, (and as I addressed in this article), what he more or less said is that a rose is still going to smell sweet even if it was called a fartburger flower. I am here to again say that it just isn’t so!

We live in a terrible era in many ways, and one of the ways is that so many things are named stupidly. Disrespecting pets is just the tip of the iceberg! They are “inventing” “new breeds” of dog by crossing a poodle with everything that exists and then making whole breed names that have the word poo in them, because that inspires respect and treats these living beings with dignity. Bizarre contests are made where the public gets to name ships, stadiums, buildings — whatever public thing forever — and people are voting for “USS Lol Dookie.” Are we morons now? I guess so!

Children names! Oh boy. Aside from the decision to name a human nugget a normal named but spelled… “creatively”… we also have the names that might as well be given to a hamster that you don’t even care if it lives or dies. Wait, where is that screencap from recently, let me show you:

A crop from a screen captured image from a TikTok video. You can tell that it is a woman holding an infant. The text she has written on it is "to evertone who bullies me for naming my daughter Poot James."

I scribbled out her profile picture, put an X over 1.1 million views, and added my own opinion: "child abuse i m o"
Cropped and editorialized upon for aesthetic reasons.

Bullies you? Arrest her! Poot James is not going to be okay! When she grows up enough to realize what has happened to her and she changes her name, how much is this young mom going to throw a fit? Will Poot James sue for divorce from her parent? This fired me all the way up when I saw it.

I also am censoring up these images even though you will easily be able to search it because I just don’t want to give this woman any more attention.

Another part of the same cropped image from TikTok, the woman's user name is violently scribbled out. She has written this text:

"Poot will be a trending name just wait. #poot #baby #BabiesOfTikTok #BabyGirl #BabyFever #F Y P #4 U #GiveWithAllYourHeart #MomsOfTikTok #MomLife #Surpris... [see more]"

And I think indicates that the music playing is @ S Z A and titled "I Hate U"? 

I'm too old to understand.
#SavePootJames

This brings me to my comic, where I am only fiery for a second in the first panel when cchris used my name casually, which he knows antagonizes me. If Canada Chris (his full name) ever decided or insisted to go by any other of these horrible choice variations for his name, everything would be different. It is possible that we wouldn’t have the same quality of camaraderie. Maybe he wouldn’t be as snarky. There are so many ways that it could be different but I do know that it just wouldn’t be the same.

This is an 18 panel comic titled "A C Chris by Any Other Name .. sorry but it wouldn't be the same." Prisstopher and Demandoll discuss options in  this real chat from 2018 or so."

It has a lot of dialogue and nuance and my hands are breaking from how much drawing I just did so I hope you don't mind that I am summarizing:

Chris greets Amanda by name and she greets him back by name. He asks her to call him Christopher. Then he goes on to list a whole lot of variants of that name such as: Topher, Kibbles, Kat, Toph, Kito, Doffa, -- at which point Amanda is like "These are not." And Chris asserts that yes they are. Goes on to say "Kitts, Risto, Gitte," And then asks if he should start going by Risto or Gitte and Amanda says "Pick something that better represents you, like Liestro King of Deceit or Contrarius, Canadian God of the Uppity Arts."

And he is like "Or Kit. Kit Thriller." And Amanda is like "Chris it is then."

Denied.

The bottom says "And that was that."

As he shared, there are a huge amount of names all meaning Christopher. I rejected them all, but at the end of the day, the most important thing that I realized is that maybe the delicious Kit Kat candy bar is actually a Christopher.

And in that case, Kit Kat is the right choice. A Chris Bar would not be a popular treat.

Sneer Back

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