Wednesday, September 24, 2008

What's in a Name?

So this would normally be Lola's Corner but since no one has sent her any pet pics to lolafrog@gmail.com, she's going to take a break and I'm going to fill in for her this week. So send her some pics of your pets for next week...

So before going to the airport on our way home from vacation, we stopped at a book store to waste some time. So I found the book Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner which I thoroughly intend to read in its entirety one day since I'm a sucker for numbers, economics, and some things freaky.

I turned to a chapter that analyzed baby names and various things like economic status of their parents and education level of their parents. I'm sure there were more but we were about to leave and this was what I had time to look at. I apparently have a name that indicates I'm poor, dumb, white trash. Hmmm...Amber, Who knew? Let me guess Sunshine as a middle name isn't helping matters is it?

Actually, for the time period I was born I don't think it necessarily said it was a name from uneducated and poor parents but during the 90's it some how became very synonymous with uneducated and poor parents. So I wonder if that means when people look at my name on my resume I get judged unfairly because they think "with a name like that she can't possibly be smart and efficient, she couldn't have possibly have credible education or experience, we just won't waste our time meeting her to get the scoop."

Let's explore this further. The meaning of Amber. Did you see the first Jurassic Park? You know the good one. Here's what I learned amber is. Sap. There goes Amber that poor sap. Now let's explore Sunshine. If I had a dollar for every time I was asked if my parents were hippies after someone looked at my license, I could probably retire. Oh if only I could charge for the answer to that question. The answer is no, but that's what people thought when they saw Amber Sunshine on my license. "Her parents must be crazy hippies." They might me crazy but they certainly were about as far from being hippies as you could get. That said I am crazy. But my parents are super smart and by no means were we poor growing up. I'm guessing pretty average. We always had a house to live in, food to eat, clothes on our back. Both of my parents have educations beyond college. one a masters and one some kind of computer programing certification. They raised me with the expectation that I would go to college. And I did.

Maybe I'm just not living up to my name. My standards may be too high and I may need to lower my expectations of myself. *Insert sarcasm if you don't get that I'm sarcastic*
Anyways I'm pretty dang proud of my name and I wouldn't change it even if that meant the job of my dreams. Unless someone's making me an offer. After all, everything's negotiable.

3 comments:

Leslie Johnson said...

Amber seems like a pretty common name. The funny thing is that in my short story On The Wire the charector by the name Amber lives in a mobil home! LOL But a little search in the Soc Sec website revieled that Amber isnt a really popular name. It reached its highest popularity in 2000 when it ranked 46th in the nation. Humm.

Amber Sunshine said...

See this is what I am saying. And on SNL Amy Poehler plays a white trash one legged character named Amber. It is pretty funny though..

Anonymous said...

My name is Amber too & middle name Ray (after ray of sunshine, not the man's name). I saw the exact same baby name list in that book when at an airport. Fictional Ambers are totally always strippers and/or dumb. So annoying!