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I'm in between when it comes to the topic, I can understand the general idea and why people might feel offended but names can have so many derivations and spelling variations it's hard to really assign them to one culture.

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Lilo, Kai, Kaia, Hana, Malia, Kane, Zuni are all names that are part of my culture too and how would someone know that Mohave is not a compound name of Mo and Have both names that exist in my culture? This isn't ment to be dismissive I understand the debate and agree that it makes sense with other aspects but I can’t understand how someone would expand it to something as fluid as names too.

This message was edited 6/27/2023, 10:09 AM

I think tribe names are weird. Like it's hard to comprehend why an English speaker would pick Hopi over Hope - do they know anything about what being Hopi means, and if not, why are they so in love with it? If so...whatever I guess; it does have a deep meaning.

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I don't like Dakota partly because it's a tribe and partly because it seems cliche to me, sort of like Indiana or McKinley. But I do like Koda which seems influenced by Kody as well as Dakota (they have kind of similar meanings which seems neat), and I think it'd be extreme to call Savannah or Shenandoah appropriative. Place names can be a gray area, but in particular, when it's a modern place name, being used by people who live there, and the cited indigenous person was ALSO named after the place, it's hardest for me to see what's wrong with that. I mean...they both clearly like the place; it's just how it is.

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And I understand sometimes people pick names from pop culture while being ignorant of potential foreign origins, although that can come across as shallow. Like at first, I didn't know what indigenous culture Yuma would connect to; I only knew it as a place name from a song ("Lonely Train" down in Yuma town, where the summer is always - down in Yuma town, a man can grow old but it's in several others). Would someone really care if I picked Yuma because I liked a song (especially when the tribe being called Yuma is potentially from Spanish for "smoke"), and if so, why? Lots of words have multiple meanings or origins, with Yumas being Cuban slang for Americans/foreigners as well as being a Japanese name, for example. Maya / Maia is another one.

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This message was edited 6/26/2023, 10:55 PM

I really disagree with the concept of "cultural appropriation" as a critique of given name choices. This is mostly because I do not see how any culture can have a monopoly on a single word.

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It's also quite clear from the use of Dakota as a given name in the USA that the original inspiration was the place name, not the name used as an ethnic designation. At the time Dakota began to be used as a given name, most Americans living outside the original homeland of this group wouldn't even have known that it was their name for themselves -- they would have called them the Sioux back then, not the Dakota.

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It's also difficult for me to see how using a word from another language as a given name when it is NOT used as a given name in the original culture is any sort of "cultural appropriation."

There is a difference between using a people group as a name, using a place name, and using a name that originated from a different culture.

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Using Apache, Cherokee, Navajo as a name would be like naming a kid French, Japanese, or Moroccan. It sounds awkward no matter what people group is substituted.

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Dakota is the name of a sub tribe of the Sioux and a language, but it is also a place name in a dozen areas. That makes it a bit tricky. If the parents are naming their kid after South Dakota that makes the name more like Dallas or Florence, but, if they are naming their kid after the people group or language, it is more like using Chinese as a first name, which is weird no matter what a person's heritage. Of course the place was named after the people group. I personally wouldn't use Dakota, but I can see how the sound and meaning would be attractive.

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Using a name that originated with a culture/ language different from your own can potentially be seen as appropriative, but there are also shades of gray. Some people might appear white or black or ambiguous but still have Native American or some other ancestry that isn't immediately discernable. They don't owe you or I a purity test to prove their right to bear a name.
Plenty of non-Jewish and non-Arabic descended people have Hebrew and Arabic derived names due to the Bible and Quran, so that is another mitigating factor in some circumstances.
I knew a girl in college from Puerto Rico, and she had a name that originated in Hawaii. You might call that appropriative, but I don't think anyone was genuinely offended by her name.

I do believe white americans, as the perpetrators of genocide against the natives, should not use their namess.

Whether or not it's cultural appropriation, it's always felt weird to me to use the name of any people for a child - be it Dakota or Moroccan.

That other site should have added "... by some." Native Americans don't all think alike.

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It was mentioned not long ago on this board that Dakota is also a long-established place name. I think that once an Indian name has that level of recognition as a place name it's pretty much in the public domain as a first name.
You will also find such names being used by Indians who are not of that particular group; my family is Cherokee and so were a lot of people in the area where I grew up, yet names like Cheyenne and Dakota got used there too, by people who were not Dakota and had no ties to the place.

Don't forget Shasta

I think Dakota is passable because it could be a reference to the states. Others like Cheyenne and Miami are fair game in my mind because of the cities. Others like Cherokee are off limits IMO.

This message was edited 6/25/2023, 6:11 PM