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HelpRe: Winona and Cherokee
in reply to a message by noisynora
I'm not one to cry "cultural appropriation" at the drop of a hat, but in this case I am going to.
Winona has some history of being used as a name across ethnic lines, and I don't really object too strongly to it being used, though I associate it with Judd and Ryder, neither of whom I like, and also it sounds to me like a motor home.
Cherokee is an ethnicity with all the usual nuances and facets of an ethnicity, and it does not lend itself to being used as a first name. I find it far more offensive as a first name on a white kid than I do Winona, and on an actual Cherokee kid it seems kind of heavy-handedly obvious.
But together as a sibset, it really is offensive; Winona is not a Cherokee word, so basically it's someone acting like they think there's just one "Native American" or "American Indian" people who share the same language and culture, and thinking that it's cool and shows how "woke" they are that they gave their daughters "Indian names" and they don't even know they're being clueless.
Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you criticize him, you're a mile away and you have his shoes!
Steve Martin
Winona has some history of being used as a name across ethnic lines, and I don't really object too strongly to it being used, though I associate it with Judd and Ryder, neither of whom I like, and also it sounds to me like a motor home.
Cherokee is an ethnicity with all the usual nuances and facets of an ethnicity, and it does not lend itself to being used as a first name. I find it far more offensive as a first name on a white kid than I do Winona, and on an actual Cherokee kid it seems kind of heavy-handedly obvious.
But together as a sibset, it really is offensive; Winona is not a Cherokee word, so basically it's someone acting like they think there's just one "Native American" or "American Indian" people who share the same language and culture, and thinking that it's cool and shows how "woke" they are that they gave their daughters "Indian names" and they don't even know they're being clueless.
Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you criticize him, you're a mile away and you have his shoes!
Steve Martin
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Replies
I agree it matters that Winona's an actual name, and Cherokee is a word referring to an entire people. And it matters that they're from different cultures. I also think the name Cherokee is too appropriated as a brand name already, to make a good name for a person who isn't Cherokee - even if it wasn't considered appropriative by anyone. (I personally think the word "appropriation" applies to things institutions do, things that are intended as mass marketing, or which are effectively propaganda - not things like baby names given by individuals. But I can see how it becomes the same, if enough people are doing it.)
I was wondering about the "appropriation" aspect of tribe names that seem to be Anglicizations of words in the languages of other tribes. I thought - how can it be appropriation of culture, if it's an English imitation of some other tribe's word? But then I noticed that there are four tribe names in the db that are like that (Shawnee, Dakota, Cheyenne, Cherokee), and they don't have other names that are in their own language. I can imagine that tribes asked one another to name them. I wonder if that is true or if anyone here knows? Anyway I thought it is interesting, kind of a tangent.
I was wondering about the "appropriation" aspect of tribe names that seem to be Anglicizations of words in the languages of other tribes. I thought - how can it be appropriation of culture, if it's an English imitation of some other tribe's word? But then I noticed that there are four tribe names in the db that are like that (Shawnee, Dakota, Cheyenne, Cherokee), and they don't have other names that are in their own language. I can imagine that tribes asked one another to name them. I wonder if that is true or if anyone here knows? Anyway I thought it is interesting, kind of a tangent.
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For what it's worth, Apache means "the enemy" in the Zuni language. The Apache call themselves Dene, which means just "the people" or something like that, but Apache has sstuck too and is much more widely known. Not to say that the Apache don't use the term themselves; they do, but not because it's their own language.
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I agree with all of this.
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