Cross-ethnically cleansing my Inbox
Do you think we could ask Gmail to put a really unlikely names filter into their program? I just don’t get legitimate email from anybody named Redler Sanbrough, Pinn Copping, Metter Vittetoe, or Britschgi Buren — not to mention Rainwaters Risby (if you’re writing a TV pilot, feel free to steal that one). It’s obvious to me that the software is just picking a random first name and a random last name. Why can’t it be obvious to Gmail?
(Because that essentially racist NLP, one of the relatively few things that you both can’t and shouldn’t do. Dumbass.)
Reminds me of the hilarious joke (so many levels to the humor): If Muhammad is the most common first name in the world, and Chen is the most common family name, why do you meet so few people named Muhammad Chen?
Email subscription
February 10th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I’ve noticed that lately . . . I find it weird that I always get spam from people with biracial name combos. Spanish (Hispanic, if you will) names with American surnames, or vice versa. I don’t know about you but, something like Pedro Jones or Charles Gonzalez just doesn’t really flow like it should. Or maybe they do exist, maybe some parents just don’t love their children.
If any of what I just wrote seemed racist, it’s OK, I’m Hispanic so I’m allowed.
February 10th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
I fucking hate Welsh people.
Don’t worry, it’s cool.
February 10th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Sheep-shagger!
February 11th, 2008 at 1:46 am
Ooh, Kee Springer! That program (different campaign) is a little better!
February 11th, 2008 at 7:06 am
If Muhammad is the most common first name in the world, and Chen is the most common family name, why do you meet so few people named Muhammad Chen?
I remember that one.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Oh, interesting, Jordon. Pretty sure I had the meme before that, but since I’m linked to within one post of that, it would be sort of daft to presume I didn’t see it at the time.
Did you come up with that yourself, or did you steal it from someone, too?
February 11th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
OK, “Muhammad is the most common given name in the world. Chang is the most common family name. There are, however, very few people named ‘Muhammad Chang’.” R.U. Steinberg, 9 November 1998.
Every other bit of fluff in that piece is recycled claptrap. I would be astonished if the joke is original to Steinberg. Therefore, the meme gets pushed back even further… I’m not sure if I was infected before this date, but I’m pretty sure I was passing it on in college, and I graduated in 1999.
I will note, however, that you were consistent with “Chang”, not “Chen”, and if this is accurate, my joke should be revised.
February 11th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I’m linked to within one post of that
And I’m linked to in that very post, aren’t I?
February 11th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Do you think we could ask Gmail to put a really unlikely names filter into their program?
I just got legitimate mailing list email from a Sven Werlen. And his native language looks to be French. What?
Bi-racial Francophone Swiss, maybe?
February 11th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
It’s funny the way the mind works. Maybe I reminded you of it back in 2003, and it’s resurfaced in your mind since then. I seem to recall coming up with it independently, actually. I remember reading (in separate places) what the world’s most common first and last names were, and with that knowledge I eventually drew the humorous connection.
February 11th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Maybe I reminded you of it back in 2003
That’s certainly possible! Things were a bit crazy back then: Jenn was eight months pregnant when you wrote that post, had just gone on pregnancy leave, and our income had been cut drastically as a result, if I remember correctly. There’s a nagging bit in my mind about when the Chen/Chang corruption happened, if it is indeed a corruption; there’s a possibility that I was infected with a mutant, and have propagated that version, and it’s also quite possible that I corrupted the story myself.
I’m not denying your claim or ability to have generated the joke independently — you were certainly bright enough. I remember coming up with the summation formula in a fit of brilliance (or something), when taking algebra at age 13 or so (about your age at the time?) When I tell this story to educated people, they frequently refer to me as “Gauss”. Gauss was like five years old or something, so I’m nowhere near as precocious as he was. But still, found something cool on my own.
If you want credit for the reminder, I hereby grant it. So bestowed!
February 11th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Wow, I can’t claim to have had any ingenious revelations at such an early age, although I could read when I was 4.
And you’re close with the guess: I was 14 when I wrote the post.
February 11th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Can someone confirm whether (at least some) Chens and Changs are rendered in the same characters in Chinese? I’m pretty sure there exist different Chens that English-speakers lump into one, and there exist different systems for transcription of Chinese sounds that don’t map directly onto English sounds, not to mention the problem (to this puzzle) of the profusion of differing source dialects. I’m pretty sure there’s only one way to write Muhammad in Arabic, and it variously ends up as Mohammed, Muhammed, and Mahomet. This joke might be much funnier in Unicode.
Talking about Muhammad nonsense, check out this news story about Wikipedia’s decision not to remove a “graven image” of Muhammad on its site. Bully for Wikipedia! Assume they had: wouldn’t the next logical step in bowing to antique ideologies be to remove all pictures of people on the sites?
Antique ideology. Pretty rough and biased, but I’m leaving it. I’m not particularly anti-Muslim: I have plenty of shit to say about your religion, too, whatever it happens to be.
Here’s the picture for posterity (absolutely stunning Medieval Muslim illustration) if Wikipedia fold:
February 11th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Sonsino Macisaac this time. A treat:
God dag indeed! Never was that more apt!
February 20th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Whoa, Isidore Griffin is selling bootleg Autodesk? Wasn’t that a character in a YA fantasy tale?
Long way to fall. Congrats on the computer literacy and all, but try doing something legal.
February 20th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
although I could read when I was 4.
Niall can read at 4, too. I’m so proud. He reads words he’s never seen before in print. He even does toughies like whipped and chocolate, although I suppose there is a strong biological drive to get good with those words. On the BJ’s Restaurant menu, actually, the only word that stumped him was “BJ’s”.
He absolutely refuses to say anything in a foreign language, though: none of the French, Latin, Japanese, or Mandarin words and phrases I’ve tried to get him to say are uttered.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
He’s growing up to be a real American!
But seriously, kids are picky. Maybe you should present them as English words. English has borrowed enough that I can think of some examples from each of those languages that would be familiar enough to go un-italicized. Of them, the pronunciation of Latin borrowings would probably be most closely conformed to that of English.
February 21st, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Maybe you should present them as English words.
Yeah, but I don’t present them as foreign words, either. He’s seems just resistant to alien phonemes — even rare ones that we actually use, such as zh. He has sensitive ears, and reacts against tonal variants in Mandarin, and against staccato delivery in Japanese (I believe that’s what he’s responding to). I could Anglicize the pronunciations, but I feel that would be a disservice, and no son of mine is going to grow up saying “TOE-kee-oh” (it’s “toh-kyo”, dammit — BBC news readers should be trained on this. Then again, they should also not say “BEAR-ick OH-bah-mah”, either. I digress…)
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:50 am
I calmed down about people mispronouncing Japanese place names when I realized that I certainly don’t come from “Loss Anjiles County.”
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:56 am
I realized that I certainly don’t come from “Loss Anjiles County.”
too-SHAY!
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:59 am
The difference, of course, is the BBC is not staking a claim to Tokyo by Anglicizing its name. The U.S. is, with Los Angeles.
In any case, “Anjiles” looks like “AN-jyles” to me, so if you are saying it like that, there really is something wrong.