Oh man, not this again:
It was once the most popular boy’s name in France, inspired in part by Hollywood films and boybands. But for the more than 150,000 French Kevins, the name has become so targeted by mockery, comic sketches and class prejudice that a new documentary is hoping to set the record straight and “save the Kevins”.
....Now — as many French Kevins reach their early 30s — there is a move to fight back against the national jokes associating the name with the stereotype of an airhead in a bad-taste shirt with a souped-up car or appearing on reality TV shows.
First there was the whole We Need to Talk About Kevin thing (i.e., why did Kevin commit a school massacre?). Then there was Germany with "Kevinism," then Britain with Kevin the Carrot, and now France. Apparently the big push is to get people to stop associating Kevin with "Gros Beauf":
For God's sake. My sister's name now stands in for an entitled white bitch. My name stands in for some kind of lowlife bonehead. My brother's name—
Well, I'm not even going to tell you his name. It's safe for now, I think. But for how long? And what did my family do to deserve this?
You're still way ahead of the Richards
I can't help but thinking this has a racial component. The Gallic, Anglo, & German Kevin haters are seeing the similarity to AAVE names like Kavon, Keyvon, Chivon, etc., & letting their White Power flag fly.
That seems far fetched. If France had a spurt of actually naming kids "Kevin", how can that be some contrived plot to let racism against black thirty years later?
Because Kevin then didn't mean what Kevin means now.
Join the club, my name is used in military memes to shut the eff up.
But Kevin is the name of the main character in Home Alone, one of the great geniuses of movies!
This just the French being French, and it's a little obvious, isn't it? Not really their best effort.
Take the Irish,
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=st+kevin%27s+lunatic+asylum&t=newext&atb=v217-1&iax=images&ia=images
Now that's putting it to work.
Kevin Arnold > Kevin Mc Allister
"Fair-begotten, handsome, teacher, learned" all applied to the name, without reference to any kind of illness, let alone mental conditions. Odd.
And whatever happened to the name Keith?
Ablow.
"Home Alone" was repellant. I prefer the Kevin who was the child hero of "Time Bandits."
Also: the Wet Bandits did nothing wrong. They were mere sufferers of economic anxiety targeting the homes of their Neoliberal oppressors.
Over-the-top Wokeness is repellent. Popular on YouTube now are videos of Karens getting beat up or arrested. They find the worst behaving white females, and they represent "Karens" I guess.
I don't think this is what's intended by being woke. As I understand the term, it's an enlightenment, a realization of historical prejudice and oppression, along with a desire to do something about it. Not pornographic violence.
"Wokeism" understood neutrally is compelled enlightenment: you don't care about the oppressed as much as you care about not being on the wrong side of the issue, "avoiding the liberal mob". But once you have a name for it you can use it to label all pro-social behavior as insincere, motivated by fear of punishment or thirst for power rather than empathy or universal principles. So recycling is "woke", giving money to the homeless is "woke", not mis-gendering people is "woke", paying your taxes is "woke". Any non-orcish behavior is just woke virtual signaling.
And while we're on this topic, I think compelled belief is much more prevalent on the right than on the left. Why? Because the right is a lot scarier. One side has guns, militias, and a history of lynching people. The other side uses sarcasm. I think a lot of people in the red parts of the country are Trump supporters not because they like him or MAGA policies in general, but because they don't want to be targeted by their neighbors. The right considers compelled selflessness a problem but compelled selfishness and cruelty is hunky dory. That's just quaint folkways.
And if the behavior is pro-social, who cares what the motives of the behaver are?
That sounds like a way to take an African-American Vernacular word and turn it into a white nationalist slur.
Which I don't care to do, and anyone else doing should be aware they're promoting Nazis when they do.
I'm guessing that Kevin's brother's name is not biblical (John, James, Thomas, Matthew, Peter, Mark, et al.).
Kevin and Karen are, to my mind, "softer" names - part of a move that took place in the Twentieth Century away from deep traditionalism.
My relative named Karen was born in the 19th century in Sweden, not a 20th century name, she passed away in the late 1980s. Don't have any Kevins that I know of in my family tree.
Karen, soft?
Have you never seen Ms. Carpenter play the drums?
Then there are all the Karens in Burma. The KLF has been fighting for freedom, or something, since at least World War II.
Burmese Karens & Filipino MILF could combine forces & takeover the world.
Remember all the K'Immies in Highlander? Why do we associate K names with bad people?
Because it's Greek, the former imperium replaced by Rome, on which much of our contemporary society is still based.
Romans never took up the k, & we are likewise leery of it. It's Greek, e.g. sodomite, e.g. the work of the devil.
There are no k's in Welsh, though until the early Modern era they were plentiful. Where did the k's go? Well, a couple of versions of the Bible to be printed in Welsh were sent to English printers. The printers had type for English, which doesn't use so many k's. But Welsh needed lots of k's! What to do? Well, they changed Welsh spelling, and because it was the Bible, the ultimate Word of God, the change stuck.
I would not cast aspersions on the name "Kevin", but Kevin McCarthy.
Oh, dear. Gros Beauf if I ever saw one.