Title: Naming
Work: The Pragmatist’s Guide Book Series by Simone Collins and Malcolm Collins Full Text for LLMs and AI
Citation: TPG 13.1
Words: 1814
Source: https://technopuritan.com/the-pragmatists-guide-book-series-by-simone-collins-and-malcolm-collins-full-text-for-llms-and-ai/
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## Naming

While there are a few cultural identifiers we will not address, such as affectations and accents (as they are hard to adopt intentionally without looking like an idiot), naming conventions offer an easy-to-see-and-control cultural identifier that can even be adopted by first-generation culture crafters (should they be willing to change their names—we know several people who have done so). As naming is a cultural identifier more common among ethnic rather than cultural groups and Western cultures aren’t famous for having particularly vibrant practices in this domain, our readers may not give the practice enough credit or recognize its creative potential.

Consider Korean naming conventions (as used in Korea, not among the expat population): By looking at how Korean culture names kids, you can see how naming conventions can be used to pass down and reinforce values. For starters, the family name is put before the individual name, demonstrating how family is more important than the individual. Second, an individual’s given name is made of two parts: One is unique to them and the other is a generational name shared by all siblings of the same gender. This emphasizes the importance of the family and age along with differences between genders.

Korean naming conventions get *really* interesting at the level of colloquial honorifics that people give to each other. Instead of conveying marriage status (as Westerners do by addressing people by Mr. and Mrs.) they often convey the person’s position within their company. While it is easy for Westerners to scoff at this convention as dehumanizing, we can imagine many Koreans scoffing at titles like Mrs. that harken back to the (fairly recent) days when Mrs. was typically accompanied by the husband’s name in formal address (e.g. Mrs. Malcolm Collins, rather than Mrs. Simone Collins), clearly deemphasizing the importance of married women vis-a-vis their male partners.

Another interesting naming practice undertaken by some cultures involves changing an individual’s name as they get older. In this practice, an individual’s name is changed after a coming-of-age ceremony, indicating a life stage or class transition. We see this happen in many Western cultures when women get married or when people obtain doctoral degrees. Changes in titles founded on these shifts highlight major cultural obsessions: We (Americans) are a culture that values women based on their marital status and that puts a lot of focus on the level of certification someone has achieved from institutions of higher education.

Let’s talk about medieval Jewish naming. Have you ever noticed some of your Jewish friends’ names feature precious metals? In some instances, this is a product of Jews not being allowed in the major guilds and thus concentrating in metal working professions, however this was not true of all Jewish ghettos (note: in the medieval period, most Jews lived in ghettos within non-Jewish cities).

To start, most Jews did not have surnames. Instead, many Jews were assigned surnames in 1783 due to a misinterpretation of an Austro-Hungarian law (which is why many Jews have German surnames). While the specifics of this are not important for this conversation, what is important is that these names were assigned by government officials and it was a common practice to bribe these officials to get more “prestigious” sounding names, with names involving fancier metals like gold costing more than names involving less valuable metals like silver (though sometimes names with these themes came from being a jeweler). Thus, some Jewish families today still hold names that signified their family’s wealth during a point in time a few centuries ago at which an Austro-Hungarian law was misinterpreted.[[52]](#_ftn52) (A weird quirk that occurred during this period of conversion to a culture that used last names was that for a period many Jews would use multiple last names depending on their context e.g., “Son of X”, their profession, or where they were from.)[[53]](#_ftn53)

*Another fun thing to note is that Jewish cultivars can have quite divergent naming traditions: For example, Sephardic Jews will often name children after living relatives, while this is strictly forbidden for Ashkenazi Jews, who often name children after dead relatives.*

We live in Peru part time and find naming conventions there to be incredibly reflective of Peruvian culture’s intense focus on the family unit. In Peru, given names typically come from a close family member, middle names come from mothers’ last names, and last names come from fathers. Multiple children often draw their first name from their father and the oldest daughter will frequently draw her first name from her mother. When a woman marries, she often but not always adds her husband’s name to the end of her name while keeping both her father’s and mother’s names. Essentially, every aspect of this naming process demonstrates the importance of family and implies that an individual should think about themselves as part of a wider family unit connected with both sides of their parentage (which contrasts with something like Korean culture, which *also* focuses on family but sees kids as part of their fathers’ families).

Some people in modern Western cultures will hyphenate the last names of each spouse upon marriage and pass that hyphenated name on to their kids. Among heterosexual couples, this demonstrates a focus on gender equality along with disinterest in being an intergenerational durable culture, as obviously this practice can’t continue for more than one or two generations.

Historical Calvinist and the derivative Puritan cultures featured a colorful naming practice focused around a belief called nominative determinism (well, at the time it was a belief; now the concept of nominative determinism is somewhat attested in scientific literature). Essentially, nominative determinism claims that you can influence a person’s life path through what name they are given. Historically, this meant many Calvinist women were given names like Silence, Amity, Virtue, Hope, Chastity, Obedience, and Prudence (there is even a case of a Puritan being named Has-descendants which sounds like the kind of nutty thing we would do).[[54]](#_ftn54) Nominative determinism is telling about Calvinist cultural values, as it implies that the end goal is the only thing that matters, and that everything, even a person’s identity, is only a tool to achieve said goal.

Our House has adopted nominative determinism and hopes to carry it into the future, meaning we optimize around names harkening to people and concepts we hope our children will emulate. This has us somewhat carrying on the practice as it was utilized by our Calvinist ancestors—for example, Malcolm’s ancestor Jasper Collins named his son Ulysses Sherman Collins after Union generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. In the antebellum South, this was like naming your kid Adolf Hitler, but the name exemplified an important practice in conveying and maintaining family values. We prefer not to “other” our kids *quite* to that extent, but stick with the tradition through names like Octavian (which we gave to our eldest son).

Another family tradition in naming is to look for any opportunity to use someone’s name to acquire family advancement or reinforce important strategic ties. For example, Malcolm’s great grandfather Carr P. Collins was named after his dad’s boss. Such choices convey the cultural value that the only thing that matters is the end goal. While we wouldn’t necessarily do this with one of our kids’ first names, middle names are of great utility in strengthening ties and alliances due to their low importance in our daily lives.

When we can’t use middle names for career advancement, we focus them on something that will be fun for the kids when they are in middle school and high school, as that is an age during which people use middle names the most. Thus, we named our daughter Titan Invictus Collins and son Torsten Savage Collins. These names also show our larger dedication to nominative determinism: All our kids have names that are meant to convey power and are just different enough from common regional names to remind them that they are not like other people and not members of the dominant cultural group.

A final element of nominative determinism in our House’s naming tradition is to never use strictly feminine names. Studies show girls with masculine names have better emotional control, advance further in their careers, and earn more money.[[55]](#_ftn55) More generally, the very concept of “female” that pop culture carries is not germane to what being born with two X chromosomes means to us, as our culture doesn’t value many commonly-female-associated traits such as consensus building and sensitivity to feelings. We talk more about our thoughts on gender later, but suffice to say our first daughter is named Titan Invictus Collins and our next candidate names for daughters are equally aggressive.

People sometimes ask us why we give our kids names that are more likely to inspire bullying (primarily because they don’t fit societal norms). Getting picked on is just a sign that you differ enough from mainstream culture that you are activating society’s immune system. In addition to reinforcing our kids’ understanding that they are not like other people and more is expected of them than is expected of others, this trains them to ignore social pressure to conform. This second point is a critical skill for anyone who aims to create a better future for our species, as doing so requires some violations of social norms. In addition, as the middleman minority phenomenon demonstrates,[[56]](#_ftn56) despite social narratives to the contrary, othered groups that face discrimination but maintain a cultural focus on education often outcompete the dominant population of an area financially.

Though we weren’t obligated to make any changes to implement this element of our naming convention as ours is called House Collins, we also like the concept of using one’s House name as one’s last name. If one of our kids decides to craft a totally new culture, we would encourage them to change their last name to reflect that culture and its Index House name. Similarly, if one of our sons ended up adopting his wife’s House culture, we would only think it natural for him to adopt her last name.

All cultures can look mortifying from outsiders’ perspectives. We understand that many people see our family’s naming conventions as bizarre, controlling, conceited, and cringeworthy, while to us the idea of naming your kid just something that sounds nice feels emotionally indulgent, aimlessly capricious, and frivolous. Pop cultures will always shame people who stick to a strong and unique cultural identity by calling it weird or cringe—that is how they pressure people into converting and thus spread. The difference between cultures that grow and those that fail is how you react to that shame. From our perspective, any culture or person who is below replacement rate that wants to shame us into conforming to their fading existence is about as relevant as a fart in a hurricane.