Thereâs a viral Twitter thread at the moment which is talking about how white nonbinary people should use Gaelic [sic] names because theyâre Very Gender due to, idk, the vowels, and you have no idea how much fun Iâm having correcting white Americansâ spelling and pronunciation of their super uwu gender âGaelicâ* Welsh names
Am I being a huge arsehole? Yes! Weâre in a heatwave, and my fury runs hotter than the sun! But also, consider this: we do need to have a conversation about appropriation of chosen names, and the fact that taking names from other cultures that you blatantly know literally nothing about (see: thinking that Welsh is Gaelic, accidentally naming yourself âwineâ) and arbitrarily deciding that it has super uwu gender vibes just because you canât easily place it within your own cultural context is Bad Actually. While the original thread on Twitter had a good point that white nonbinary people (of which I am one) need to stop taking East Asian names, I think that all the people taking âGaelicâ (again, [sic]) names are just part of the same problem, which is the idea that being a white queer person somehow gives you a license to appropriate other cultures based solely on Gender Vibes TM, and like⌠no. No, it does not.
The thing is, you donât get to just take a name from another culture and reduce it solely to the gender and meaning you give it as an individual outside of that culture, because that name has very specific meanings and contexts in its place and culture of origin. You donât get to treat names from other cultures and languages in a way that you wouldnât treat names from your own cultural and linguistic context. If this sounds like Iâm saying âdonât make [insert culture here] names gender neutralâ, then let me clarify that Iâm not saying that at all. On the contrary, itâs completely fine to de/re-gender a name! Names are just phonemes and orthography is a construct, just like gender! Call yourself whatever you like; I think de-gendering and re-gendering names is good and right and proper. Howevs, itâs not OK to do it solely on the basis of a nameâs non-Anglo roots, or because a nameâs perceived strangeness (or uniqueness) or difference make it seem or sound genderless to you. You not having an awareness of a nameâs meaning does not mean it doesnât have a meaning.
If you wouldnât make, idk, Kaylynn or Roger or Paul gender neutral, then ask yourself why you view non-Anglo names as inherently more malleable and available to reinterpret. Call yourself what you want! Chosen names are very very valid and very important! Just make sure you know why you view certain names as Rigid And Untouchable And Inherently And Inexorably Gendered and other names as ripe for reinterpretation, because often that reason is Anglocentrism and colonialism. Eirlys and Aiko and Aoife and Saoirse and Ryu and Bryn are only gender neutral if Graham and Rachel and Oliver and Alan and Nancy and Luke are gender neutral, i.e. on the basis that all names can be divested from a specific gendered context, not just names that you perceive as being somehow ~mystical genderless otherworldly super gender uwu names~.
tl;dr if a nameâs Gender Vibes rest solely on it being from another culture and therefore somehow Magic And Beyond All Concepts of Gender, then you need to reconsider why that is, and whether youâre just exoticising it and taking aesthetics from a culture without respecting its meaning and origin. âIt looks coolâ is not a good enough reason to decide that you get to use a name and divest it of all context. If youâre going to use a name from another culture, then for fuckâs sake, learn how to spell and pronounce it and what it means, and make sure that youâre doing it out of respect.
(Also, pet peeve, but for the love of holy God, donât just pick a name because you like its uwu mystical Celtic vibes and then spend your whole life mispronouncing it and telling everyone that it means some absolute bullshit like âfiery dragonâ or âelven princessâ. We cri evrytiem. Plus, youâll probably just end up calling yourself âwineâ.)
*except Welsh is Brythonic, not Gaelic, lads, and words have meanings!