Kevinism

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Kevinism and Chantalism are ironic names for the tendency to give children unusual, foreign-sounding first names. Kevin coined the term Kevinism for this cliché , as a female equivalent, Chantalism was formed from Chantal . The term itself originally comes from the satire wiki Uncyclopedia and was later picked up and discussed by journalists .

The counterpart to Kevinism is Emilism .

Sociological Background

The question of whether parents from the lower social classes tend to give their children exotic or Anglo-American first names is a controversial issue among sociologists and linguists . One reason for choosing such a name would be the parents' low educational background, who take their suggestions for choosing a name from popular culture or less demanding media; For example, the name Kevin, which was previously little used in Germany, is said to have suddenly been chosen much more frequently after the very successful film Kevin - Alone at Home in 1990. The English national football player Kevin Keegan, who is popular in Germany and who was one of the first English professionals to play in the Bundesliga at the end of the 1970s, and the Hollywood actor Kevin Costner , who was very well known around 1990, are usually named as further inspirations for the naming . So far, there are no meaningful statistics on this topic. A counterexample is the “chantalism” of naming the children of Uwe Ochsenknecht .

prejudices

According to a master's thesis written at the University of Oldenburg in 2009, certain first names of students actually generate prejudice on the part of teachers. The name Kevin, for example, suggests to the teachers that the pupil is more behavioral, weaker and more likely to come from the lower class . However, it was not possible to conclusively work out whether a student was treated worse because of this. Such prejudices are said to be particularly widespread among teachers in West Germany .

English or exotic first names are often stigmatized as typical " Ossi " names in the old federal states . In fact, English first names were at times very popular in East Germany , especially in the two decades before the fall of the Wall , but also in the middle class , while the preference for such first names is now perceived as a lower class phenomenon, especially in the old federal states. What is noticeable in this context is the often different (or Germanized) spelling of the names in East Germany (e.g. Meik instead of Mike ).

According to a study by the Leipzig linguist Gabriele Rodriguez from 2012, first names close to Kevinism such as Mandy , Peggy or Kevin wrongly have a bad reputation. On the basis of statistics from former students at the University of Leipzig she analyzed , she pointed out that many university graduates now also have such first names. Among the academics with the first name Kevin from the aforementioned data collection from the University of Leipzig were, for example , chemists , theologians and German scholars , some of whom had doctorates .

The name researcher and linguist Damaris Nübling spoke on the occasion of her participation in a conference on “First names as social markers” in September 2015 of a “smear campaign” against first names like Kevin and Chantal, and criticized the rhetoric surrounding these first names as “complete cheap polemics ”.

Derivatives

The word Alpha-Kevin (composed of Alpha (male) and the first name), which is supposed to describe a particularly stupid young person, was temporarily at the top of the online vote for the youth word of the year in 2015 . However, it was deleted from the list of proposals because bearers of the name could be discriminated against. From a linguistic point of view, however, the phenomenon that very often given first names are sometimes given negative prejudices or even used as swear words is nothing new. In the past, this applied to first names such as Horst , Detlef , Uschi , Manni (short form of Manfred ), Ingo and Heini (short form of Heinrich ).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kevinismus, Preventable Childhood Disease in Welt-Online, December 23, 2007, accessed June 9, 2013
  2. ↑ Kevinism as a preventable childhood disease , Die Welt, December 23, 2007, last seen on December 24, 2015
  3. ↑ Does the classic lower class name exist? , Die Welt, February 27, 2008, last seen on December 24, 2015
  4. ↑ Anne Hähnig: What does that mean? Names like Peggy or Denny reveal more than their wearers would like. You can still be successful with it. In: Die Zeit , October 31, 2012, supplement Zeit im Osten p. 12–13, here p. 13.
  5. ↑ Julia Isabell Kube, first name research, questionnaire study among teachers, whether there are prejudices regarding specific first names of elementary school students and specific personality traits derived from them, university thesis including: Oldenburg, Univ., Master-Arb., 2009
  6. ↑ Oliver Trenkamp: "Kevin is not a name, but a diagnosis" , Der Spiegel, September 16, 2009, last seen on September 17, 2009.
  7. ↑ discrimination based name - Mandy's suffering , Migazin, February 27, 2012, last seen on October 25, 2015.
  8. ↑ a b What do you mean? Zeit Online, October 31, 2012, last seen on October 25, 2015
  9. ↑ Difficult first names "Nobody takes Lilly seriously" , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 14, 2015, last seen on September 19, 2015.
  10. ↑ Youth Word of the Year does not run on "Alpha-Kevin" , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 26, 2015
  11. ^ How names become swear words, Jetzt.de , Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 7, 2015, last seen on September 19, 2015