A Rebranding Guide for Spanish-Surnamed Persons Not Wanting to Have Their Doors Kicked In
To refer to a Jew, much like myself, as a Jew is a faux pas approximately equivalent to not capitalizing the word black when it refers to a person with African ancestors. A couple of years ago, someone informed me on line, presumably with a straight face, that Jew wasn’t kosher because Jews is what the Nazis called us. (The genteel, if not gentile, thing is to speak of persons of the Jewish faith. The more syllables, you see, the more palpable the speaker’s respect.)
For many decades, we American persons of the Jewish faith felt compelled to alter our names to make them less Jewish-seeming. Our spectacular former Attorney General would have been Merrick Garfinkel if his grandparents hadn’t changed Garfinkel to Garland. Robert Alan Zimmerman became Bob Dylan without a forebear’s help.
The young woman who sat next to me wearing too much perfume in Poly Sci at UCLA wasn’t Deborah Levine, but Deborah LeVine. Ooh la la. Très chic! Hypergentiles surely would have been less eager to wear the clothing he designed if Ralph Lauren had remained Ralph Lifshitz.
Other nationalities have of course done the same sort of thing. The late Amy Winehouse duet partner Tony Bennett was born Antonio Benedetto. Dean Martin had been born Dino Crocetti. My architect friend David Oh had been Hyuntak Oh when he disembarked the plane from Seoul.
All of which is to set the stage for my suggestion that Latinos might want to consider the same tactic. Can you imagine Tom Homan and ICE being as confident about kicking down the door of someone named Bill Sanders as they would that of Guillermo Sanchez?
Herewith, some suggestions for suspicion-dispelling versions of the most common Latino names in America:
García becomes Garrett. Rodríguez become Rodgers. López becomes Lawrence. Pérez becomes Peterson. Martínez becomes Mulholland (I come from LA. So shoot me.). Hernández becomes Henderson. González becomes Goodman. Ramírez becomes Robinson. Torres becomes Tompkins. Flores becomes Fitzgerald. Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, if there were a just God, become deceased.
De nada.
President Trump's Transphobia Explained!
The author Robert M. Pirsig’s observation that “we always condemn most in others…that which we most fear in ourselves.” is true, according to a recent study at the University of Western North Carolina at Pigeon Forge headed by Dr. Nathan Placebo.
On the subject of transphobia and Trump. There is Trump kissing Rudy in DRAG, and saying you are beautiful.
On Italian names, not all are Italian. I served with a Lt Taliaferro. I was not aware, but his ancestor was probably a peer of mine, back i the early 17th Century, and Taliafero's served in the revolution.
There were Italians Poles living along side English in the early James River Coummunity in Virginia.
The tailor who made the brown and black suits Washington wore for his inaugaration and as president was an Italian.
The Swedes settled Philadlphia before William Penn, the Dutch were the first in NY, had not the Puritans on the Mayflower ran out of beer they would have beat the Dutch , and of course the Spanish settled Florida, Louisiana, Texas, NM, AZ amd CA.
I served in the military with two dudes from Arizona,Garcia and Jaramillo, whose family trace their land grants further back than Jamestown.
Tis the Mormons, the Northern Europeans, the Anglo's who are the interlopers.
Sadly, many may feel compelled to follow this advice.
The anglicization of names has gone one since at least the 1800s. One of the worst of these (in my opinion) was the change from Tagliaferro (Italian) to Tolliver (English). Then again, most Italians with "gl" or "gn" in their names don't pronounce them correctly, anyway...