Why did you give that white baby a black name?

This is quite possibly the funniest, and least predicted, culture clash ... yet inoffensive ... we'll ever experience.

Marcy brought our daughter, Saoirse, into work so that her co-workers could meet her. The 2-month old was fawned over by the predominately female staff.

Now, I should also point out that we enjoy telling Americans her name, and explaining how to pronounce it and its origin. We joke with friends that we'll only tell them how to pronounce her name once, and if they can repeat it correctly the next day, they win a prize. No one has come to claim it!! Irish vowels make explaining this difficult, but the closest I can give you is: Say-er-sha; with 'Say-er' being one syllable ... and 'sha' ending more in an 'eh'. It's an Irish word that translates to Freedom.

This is a big set-up for a short story, but basically one of Marcy's Black co-workers honestly asked (on hearing the name spoken alone), "Why did you give that white baby a black name?" Given that we generally hear an indignant, "Why did you give her such a difficult name? You'll have to teach her to spell it," this was refreshing. [Side-note: of course we have to teach her how to spell her name. Sure we'll have to spell it to everyone who meets her. But considering (as noted before) we already have to spell her sur(family)name, and our first names, we're used to it.]

An explanation to our Irish friends: there is an interesting trend where old irish names are being adopted into the African-American culture, albeit perhaps a little unwittingly, and with significantly different spelling. That said, I could be wrong, and it just be a co-incidence. But let me introduce you to exhibit A and B.

My sister's name is Ciara. European-America's have twisted it's spelling to Kiera to better line-up it's pronunciation with English syllabi than Irish. Now, there is a hip-hop artist, who uses the Irish spelling, but pronounces her name as Sierra - a more English pronunciation of the Irish spelling.

Marcy's grandmother's name is Duana - the female equivalent of Duane, both in their Irish forms [Dwayne and Duwanna for those looking for something closer to the phonetics]. Marcy's conversation with the same co-worker also lead to a similar, "That's a Black name" comparison.

Rather than been accused of making our daughter's life difficult for giving her an ethnic name - okay no-one has put it those terms, but we can read in between the lines - it's nice to have a example of culture's mixing in the United States. We're very proud of our daughter's name and it's meaning. Names are supposed to be important and have meaning, and we're glad Saoirse's will evoke honest questions about differences and similarities in cultures.

O'NO!!!

I'm officially sick of the "O'jokes". Using it as a prefix to any word does not automatically make it funny, quaint or Irish.

This is one of the many things about St. Patrick's Day (over here) that gets really annoying really fast; blatant overuse of something from another culture that is neither understood nor appreciated.

It's made me more aware of the other immigrants around me, and the different bastardisations of their culture that may be prevalent. But more about these at another time.

For my American friends: O' comes from the the ancient naming conversion of saying who you where from. Mick O'Neill translates as Mick from(lit.) Niall, but is more commonly translated as Mick son of Niall.

And yes, my initials are MON, not MO; MN maybe, but not MO.

Stupid

One thing I had to quickly learn about the typical Minnesotan is their passive-aggressive mature. Now, we're not an aggressive person by nature, but in contrast, Marcy and I seem to have gained "reputations". Why the quotes? Because few here have the guts to tell us this.

We've picked it up from our more candid, straight talking friends. In my two years at my company (which shall remain nameless to protect the innocent!), rumour has it that I've managed to scare a whole crew of technicians, and start arguments at every turn. This is because I ritually do something view do, speak my mind.

People here have an opinion that you cannot criticise the idea without attacking the person, so they don't. They will happily blast the person behind their back though. I know you can critique the idea and still respect the person. To those I report to, I'm known as someone who can analyse objectively, and bring a group together to get things done.

It's to the point where I am the arbitrator when it comes to the processes on which I am a subject matter expert. So when I arrive into work on Monday, and have a memo waiting for me asking if someone's breach from procedure had merit (a procedure which I had just helped in reinforcing people's training), there was only one way to sum up the individuals idea: stupid. And that's the word I used in the memo, which I sent to individual's boss.

Now, I'm not naive enough to think that I'd get a statement like that out without a comment. But I meant stupid as it was the best adjective I could use for an idea which was [ref.]:

1. Obtuse
2. Was a poor decision
3. Marked by a lack of care
4. Stunningly inaccurate
5. Pointless; worthless

Their Boss later suggested that I should not have used that word. I truly feel that the use of any other word would have been ... well, stupid. Of course, it would be unfair, nay cowardly of me to post what the error was. This whole post probably makes me seem really aggressive to American readers, and silly to Irish readers who would use words much stronger than stupid.

But I cracked a smile when, in a meeting with their Boss on a different matter, he used the word stupid. Maybe I've started something (fingers crossed).