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HelpRe: A pitch for my own - and what a Pitch! (Ha Ha Ha)
in reply to a message by Barbra
I hadn't made a connection until now, that my childrens' joke nonsense phrase BAR BAR BAR is actually equivalent to the origin of the name Barbara!
That is fun. I thought that barbaros was really just a Greek word meaning foreign.
We do this goofy thing with our car's voice command feature ... when it is waiting for input the kids say BAR BAR BAR, and a robotic female voice says "please repeat!" so ... they say it again, BAR BAR BAR ... and she asks again for us to please repeat. (Well, car rides can be boring. and I have a lame sense of humor maybe.) Anyway I think the car's voice has a new name: Barbara! My husband had wanted to call it Prudence, but I think Barbara fits much better.
I agree the name is classic and respectable, but I'm afraid the connotation of beautiful strangers is going to have to be a thing of another generation (which it could be in the future as well as the past). To me it's the name of my friends' mothers when I was growing up, women born in the 40s - and one of the harshest sounding classic feminine names that isn't Germanic. And Barbie is the doll. As a child I recall thinking it was a weirdly unfashionable and old name for a doll that is supposed to be super fashionable and youthful.
Anyway thanks for the tidbit that will always make me smile about the name Barbara. Which is not a bad name, I agree - I just won't ever find it appealing. (Well come to think of it, if I start calling my car that, I might, a little bit!) If your name is really Barbara / Barbra, good for you for choosing to be positive about it. People not liking a person's name doesn't really amount to anything at all in real life, IMO.
- mirfak
That is fun. I thought that barbaros was really just a Greek word meaning foreign.
We do this goofy thing with our car's voice command feature ... when it is waiting for input the kids say BAR BAR BAR, and a robotic female voice says "please repeat!" so ... they say it again, BAR BAR BAR ... and she asks again for us to please repeat. (Well, car rides can be boring. and I have a lame sense of humor maybe.) Anyway I think the car's voice has a new name: Barbara! My husband had wanted to call it Prudence, but I think Barbara fits much better.
I agree the name is classic and respectable, but I'm afraid the connotation of beautiful strangers is going to have to be a thing of another generation (which it could be in the future as well as the past). To me it's the name of my friends' mothers when I was growing up, women born in the 40s - and one of the harshest sounding classic feminine names that isn't Germanic. And Barbie is the doll. As a child I recall thinking it was a weirdly unfashionable and old name for a doll that is supposed to be super fashionable and youthful.
Anyway thanks for the tidbit that will always make me smile about the name Barbara. Which is not a bad name, I agree - I just won't ever find it appealing. (Well come to think of it, if I start calling my car that, I might, a little bit!) If your name is really Barbara / Barbra, good for you for choosing to be positive about it. People not liking a person's name doesn't really amount to anything at all in real life, IMO.
- mirfak
This message was edited 8/18/2015, 10:55 PM
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Replies
Adult Greeks themselves said "Bar-Bar" to mock foreigners
Yes - the Greeks themselves said "Bar-Bar" to mock foreigners who did not speak Greek; as Kids mock the computer but more laughing in fun than in intolerance. Over time - due to some personal tastes, the name was also identified with strange exoticism - and grew more exclusively appropriated with women than men, although I do not know the number of males who might have had such a name among the ancients, which could have been few or none.
I know a lady who named her car Barbara; which brought to buy the little Barbie Doll for my dash board.
Yes - the Greeks themselves said "Bar-Bar" to mock foreigners who did not speak Greek; as Kids mock the computer but more laughing in fun than in intolerance. Over time - due to some personal tastes, the name was also identified with strange exoticism - and grew more exclusively appropriated with women than men, although I do not know the number of males who might have had such a name among the ancients, which could have been few or none.
I know a lady who named her car Barbara; which brought to buy the little Barbie Doll for my dash board.
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Interesting that you mention this about the car.
I dropped the middle "a" to further distance the name from the connotations of Bar- bar / Barbarian. I am in New Yorker - and I've never heard the middle 'A' of the middle syllable pronounced, so I abbreviated the spelling accordingly.
As more of a thinker & dreamer, I've never had dolls of any sort--not even many toys when growing up, but as I found this new acceptance, and grew exited about the name's heritage - especially about the correlation between the legend of Saint Barbara and the Rapunzel Fairy Tale, so I acquired a small Barbie Doll to sit on my car dashboard - as though a protector and governess, as the US Navy adopted Saint Barbara as protector of ships and crew.
I understand and even feel, as it were, the sentiment that the name Barbara is "old". It is, simultaneously, classy.
I believe that the Barbie diminutive is quite young, and this is the name I am usually called--especially by younger ladies, who continuously re-iterate my name when they see me.
I dropped the middle "a" to further distance the name from the connotations of Bar- bar / Barbarian. I am in New Yorker - and I've never heard the middle 'A' of the middle syllable pronounced, so I abbreviated the spelling accordingly.
As more of a thinker & dreamer, I've never had dolls of any sort--not even many toys when growing up, but as I found this new acceptance, and grew exited about the name's heritage - especially about the correlation between the legend of Saint Barbara and the Rapunzel Fairy Tale, so I acquired a small Barbie Doll to sit on my car dashboard - as though a protector and governess, as the US Navy adopted Saint Barbara as protector of ships and crew.
I understand and even feel, as it were, the sentiment that the name Barbara is "old". It is, simultaneously, classy.
I believe that the Barbie diminutive is quite young, and this is the name I am usually called--especially by younger ladies, who continuously re-iterate my name when they see me.
1