Quite so… I’d think the majority of us want to be nice…
but I reckon it is not unreasonable to query just why a name-change is needed…
Frankly, one needs to be certain that not only is the change absolutely necessary, but that the “new” name will have a truly beneficial effect…
Not to overlook the fact that changing names means all associated paperwork/books and heaven knows what stuff … have to be reprinted/emblazoned with the new name…
Can end up costing quite a bit of money… and I would hope this money will not prove to have been wasted on a whim… or a misunderstanding…
shortbread, anyone? Offending id only 5 feet tall. Just supposing Lady Hussey was hoping to open an interesting conversation about Ms Fulani’s ancestry. Crazy, all of it. what field did she work in? Wah!
What will happen when the little blue men decide to stay instead of zooming off in their spaceship?
Will we be In real trouble for calling them blue when they call themselves cobalt?
‘First Nations’ they are called now, but I have heard on TV Red Indians being interviewed who used that term too. If I was a Red Indian or a black person I think I would be more offended by ways to get round such words as being belittling. (There is a better word for it but my ageing brain refuses to bring it to the fore )
Different tribes prefer different terms as I understand, so it generally depends where geographically they’re from. But really it just comes down to the thing of using whatever people want when discussing them. Just as calling a Welshman British may not be their preferred term, they’d rather be known as Welsh. Or for that matter a Yorkshireman may prefer to be known as that than English which lumps them in with all those woke politically correct people down south, or British which includes Nic Sturgeon and her lot!
Frankly I don’t care what they call me, English, Welsh, British, Brit, Limey, Pommie, even Whingeing Pom. It is the way things are said that matter, otherwise people are far too sensitive and sometimes, in order to be insulting in the opposite direction.
When I was at sea, a fellow crew member on learning I was born in Manchester, asked timidly if I minded being called Lanky. It didn’t stick because someone else called me Sherry, which did. Surprisingly it wasn’t a suggestion that I was queer (another term, once reviled now back in fashion by some of that persuasion), but because I came from Nottingham (short for Sherriff ).
At school I was Bud, and the infrequent contacts with old school friends still bring it back to life. I was called that because, inhabiting the nearest bed to the dorm door, the house master would come in to wake us in the morning and say ‘come on Bud, time to get up’.
Spardo? The shortened version of our nearest large village, also the name of the Petanque club (Spardocians) and, at the annual street night market, the name of the punch served up from 50 gallon tubs.
Errrr unacceptable for even more recent reasons. I met an old lady at work in Belgium who dropped in one summer afternoon to say hello, the tattoo on her arm hadn’t faded appalling. L’homme est un loup pour l’homme though generally worse than any wolf.
Gawd, don’t say that word, I can feel the blood rising in some on here, the copies of The Telegraph being thrown angrily on the floor while orders are barked “Mavis, get me GB News on the phone, someone on SF has said the P word, we need that lunatic who pretends he’s a vicar to perform an exorcism and get things back on the good Christian straight and narrow. Political Correctness gone maaaaad I tell ya.”
OTOH there may be people, or perhaps ‘beings’ or ‘non-things’ out there, who are actually anti-noun/s and may have been offended, or even ‘distressed’ by posters’ use of that other term.
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appalling. L’homme est un loup pour l’homme though generally worse than any wolf.