Jun 26, 2009

How Many of Me?

by Lisa Radding lradding@ethnictechnologies.com

There are only two of “me,” that is to say, two people named “Lisa Radding.” I know this because the name Radding was created at Ellis Island and thus all Raddings are related to me. Additionally, my family has done extensive genealogical research to find these Raddings and connect them all in an enormous family tree. There is one other Lisa with the last name Radding, a distant cousin of mine (who had the name first.)

But if you don’t have a last name like mine, you might be curious how many of “you” are out there. Visit this website, How Many of Me, for the answer. Granted, the site only gives you an estimate, based on how popular your first and last names are (according to the 1990 census data.) Actually in my case, it’s wrong. The site predicts that I am unique! But that’s pretty close.

This site also doesn’t take ethnicity into account in its predictions. Why should ethnicity matter? Well, Jose Gonzales is a much more likely combination than Jose Kowalski or Jose Tanaka. Unlike with E-TECH, this website looks at Jose and Gonzales or Jose and Kowalski independently from each other rather than looking at the name as a whole. But then again, this site isn’t in the business of predicting ethnicity the way we are.

Regardless of its flaws, it’s still fun to see the rough estimate… although you probably have one already. Who hasn’t googled themselves?

Jun 23, 2009

“Guess My Weight.”

by Lisa Radding lradding@ethnictechnologies.com

“Guess My Weight...” My life is not a carnival, but I play this game a lot. At Ethnic Technologies, people frequently walk up to our booth at places like DMDays NY and ask us to guess their ethnicity by looking at their name tag. We lovingly refer to this aspect of our work as the “guess my weight” phenomenon.

At DMDays NY last week one skeptical show attendee came up to the booth, not to discuss our product, but to test us at this game. I tried to explain that while our software product is name based, it’s a bit more complicated than that. He didn’t care; he just wanted me to tell him he was Bulgarian, which Tina did, much to his amazement. I’m sorry I don’t remember his name. And he wasn’t interested in leaving a business card.

Unless it’s a name I’ve looked at specifically, a name with glaringly obviously letter combination's, or an ethnicity with which I have a lot of experience, I usually only know the region. When the person stands in front of me, I also get their physical features and their accent as hints. I don’t, however, have 30 years of research or the Internet at the click of my mouse like I do in the office. Bulgarian, Romanian, Moldavian, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian… so, he was one of those, or a few others. You go with your first instinct, which in Tina’s case is almost always correct.

I play “guess my weight” pretty much every time I meet new people. When my sister introduced me to some friends last weekend, one with the last name Soltani asked the inevitable question. After he spelled his name (see my previous post about pronunciation), I knew the area of the world. Persian was a lucky guess… the luck being that I had some other clues from earlier in our conversation. But it’s always nice to impress rather than be forced to bumble about not having my computer at hand. Back in the office yesterday, I looked up Soltani in our software. No surprises there.

If I knew everything already, I wouldn’t be a researcher. I would be simply a product developer. But as a researcher, the very nature of my job is to learn more. It’s this learning that keeps the work interesting. On those days, however, when I correctly identify an ethnicity from a name tag, the knowing is immensely satisfying. My job is to learn (and to apply this learning to improve our products), not to know. Therefore the “guess my weight” phenomenon can put me in an awkward situation. People expect me to know, but I see success at the carnival as an added bonus.

Jun 19, 2009

Erin or Aaron

by Lisa Radding lradding@ethnictechnologies.com

I’m back from the DMDays NY Show, where I got to discuss my work. The key word here is “discuss.” I look at, think about, and write about names daily, but I don’t say these names out loud. In this line of work, pronunciation only comes in to play when articulating my work, for example, at shows. But as a name nerd, it does come in to play in my life.

I have a good friend named Erin. When I used to live with her, I’d shout across the apartment, “Eh-rin, are you home?” Then our other roommates would make fun of my pronunciation of Erin. They didn’t like the “eh” beginning. (I apologize for my unconventional spellings here, but without IPA, writing phonetically is the simplest way to capture pronunciation nuances.) Since Erin actually introduces herself as “Air-rin,” that is what our other roommates call her. It’s a subtle difference you don’t always hear, but it matters to me.

I call her “Eh-rin” to differentiate her from Aaron, which I pronounce “Air-rin.” Although we didn’t have another roommate, or even a good friend named Aaron, in my mind, these are two separate names, which I would associate with different people. Erin, a girl’s name, is the Anglicized form of the Gaelic meaning Ireland. Aaron, a boy’s name, is of Hebrew origin, meaning mountain, exalted or strength. In the bible, Aaron is Moses’ older brother. My friend Erin is Irish Catholic. (She has a brother Sean… don’t get me started on spelling and pronunciation with that one.) She is a part of my college world, not the American Jewish world in which I was raised, where every other person had a friend or relative named Aaron.

When I originally explained my pronunciation to my roommates, I told them it was to differentiate Erin from the boy’s name Aaron, stressing the gender difference. As androgynous names proliferate our culture, I tend to keep names distinct. As I reflect on instances like Erin/Aaron, however, where pronunciation is important to me, I realize that I may have pigeon holed my thoughts into gender research or ethnic research. It is all these pieces together that construct the identity of a name, something central to the identity of a person. When I connect a name to a person I know, I’m that much more conscious of what the name means.

I don’t know Dziadzan, Zydrute, Kielo, or Shaghosgi. I looked at those names last week without ever articulating them. I am interested in assigning them ethnicity and gender purely as names, with potential to be connected to people, but not as individuals in my life with complicated identities. At the DMDays NY show I thought about pronunciation because my difficulties articulating this research stemmed from an inability to pronounce examples like these. Whereas pronunciation doesn’t usually affect my research, as a name nerd, it affects my life in a way most people don’t notice or care about (except maybe to make fun of me). When the name is connected to an individual, pronouncing a name a certain way is part of my connection to a person and my relationship with their identity.

Jun 12, 2009

Feminine Endings

by Lisa Radding lradding@ethnictechnologies.com

As I’ve been evaluating and improving G-TECH recently, I’ve been looking at more than just names. I also focused on the pieces of names, specifically feminine endings. I’m sure you can name a few without much thought: -ah, -ie, -ette, -elle (the spellings can vary, of course.)

Interestingly enough, these are relatively consistent across languages. I’m thinking of a song for American children learning Hebrew (a language with gendered nouns). The lyrics go, “you need an ette, at the end of a word or else an aaah, either one’s for a girl…” Yes, this song is about nouns, not names, but it demonstrates that certain sounds trigger “feminine” to the human brain. This thought is remarkably comforting as I try to sort out a database including names from over 100 different ethnicities. Yet I still have to look at the individual names because with naming trends there are always exceptions to the patterns.

I also have to take into account that my perception of a name or an ending could be skewed not only by my ethnic vantage point, but also my age. These feminine endings go in and out of style. There is a cool graphic on this site that maps the changing popularity of feminine endings:
http://contexts.org/graphicsociology/2009/06/10/baby-name-trends-spread-across-france/

It’s true that to my ears –ette feels both feminine and old fashioned. For example, Julia ranked 40th in 2008 while Julie ranked 335th and Juliette ranked 549th. Many other examples such as Jeanette and Mariette didn’t even make the top 1000 names for 2008. And what about the similar ending –etta? Could my lack of experience with certain feminine endings (because I grew up with Katie and Hannah rather than Georgene and Claudette) impact my name analysis? I’m constantly considering my angle on names as I examine our products.

I like this graph because it shows the trends I’ve internalized while pouring over names with feminine endings. In doing so, it validates my G-TECH research method of examining feminine endings. The next thing I’d like to see is a graph mapping feminine endings across ethnicity. But that’s probably up to me to create… perhaps when I’m not assembling an improved G-TECH and our other various products.


Jun 8, 2009

Whats New for June 09..

by Lisa Radding lradding@ethnictechnologies.com

What’s new at Ethnic Technologies this summer? Well, this blog, for one thing. But also, G-TECH, which lets you append your database by gender. So as we approach DMDAYS NY, I’m going to start my blogging with thoughts on names and gender.

We tend to think of the gender of a name as stagnant. For example, my name, Lisa, is feminine. It always has been, and so one assumes it always will be.

While that was once the case, American baby name choices are departing from the traditional male/female dichotomy. One place this is evident is in the top baby names of 2008, which were recently published by the U.S. Social Security Administration. Here is the girls’ list:

1. Emma
2. Isabella
3. Emily
4. Madison
5. Ava
6. Olivia
7. Sophia
8. Abigail
9. Elizabeth
10. Chloe

My first observation: What is Madison doing on the girls’ list?! Ok, because I’ve followed name trends my entire life, I’m not actually surprised. However, the linguist in me is indignant. It ends in “son.” Could there be any more obvious marker in the English language that this is a boys’ name? Jackson, Jason, Samson… they look and sound masculine. (Disregard Alison for now.) Madison, from an English surname meaning "son of Maud,” was originally a male name. Yet in 2008 it was the fourth most popular name for a baby girl!

Recently I’ve been scouring lists of names with an eye for these phonetic irregularities. Although Madison may once have been exclusively male, and phonetically resembles male names more than it does its female counterparts, it is now overwhelmingly female. As we shift from the strict male/female dichotomy, gender identification becomes increasingly complex. This makes me wonder what kind of girls all these little Madisons will be, but that’s a different topic. I just stay abreast of the trends- surprising, interesting or whatever else. And thus I can assure you that with G-TECH, when Madison grows up, you will be able to accurately market to HER.
®

Jun 3, 2009

DMDAYS NY

by Candace candace@ethnictechnologies.com

Visit Ethnic Technologies at booth # 529 for DMDAYS NY.

Find out more about G-Tech 09...