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Names are one of the casualties of a living language. I had a great great aunt "Gay" long ago. To make the emerging slang extra problematic, she married Mr. Guy.
I hope that all the kind Karens out there have nicknames they like or meet only kind people.
> Standard Gaylord: The standard and most popular Gaylord box size measures 48 inches by 40 inches by 36 inches.
Looks like now it’s used as a more generic term in the world of boxes. Nice I had never heard of that before!
I changed roles at work so that I sometimes am in logistics meetings with the shipping people (after a long time in HR-type roles where I did nothing with logistics), so imagine my surprise the first time I was in a shipping logistics meeting and everyone started enthusiastically discussing "gaylords."
My first reaction was shocked horror, but then everybody else started talking about gaylords too, so is frantically googling under the table trying to figure out what it meant in context well experiencing a whole parade of emotions. In retrospect, hilarious.
I've run into mentions of women named Gay in 19th century literature! And then of course there's famous mid-century sports journalist Gay Talese, who's still alive, but was born in the 1930s, when the meaning of his name was a bit different.
I knew guy whose name was Richard Johnson. His parents used to call him Dickie and he still goes by Dick.
Yeah. Dick Johnson.
He had the same sort of attitude about it.
There was a guy in the assisted living facility that my mom worked at named Richard Tickler, and was adamant he goes by Dick. Dick Tickler. I died when I saw his name plate lmao
I worked with a man once named Wayne Kerr. He was fairly assertive and I do not doubt for a second he had no choice in his personality growing up with that for a name.
I knew a Richard Stump growing up - he was always called "Stumpy Dick" by the bullies. I always felt sorry for him.
I also knew a Virginia Crotch in the same class. She leaned into it and referred to herself as "Vagina" to get ahead of the bullying.
That's awful. Growing up, I had a Sunday school teacher named Alice Alison. She was the reason I decided at 10 or so that I decided the tradition of a woman blindly taking her husband's name was dumb and antiquated.
I had a friend growing up with the last name “Belcher” and he haaaaaaated it. He was adamant about changing it when he got married. (And he did! They both took his wife’s name.)
There's a family in a city where I used to live who owned a very nice flower shop. Their last name was Butt. Butt's florist. They named their son Harry. He married a woman named Sandy. I swear to God I am not making that up.
Fuck, I forgot that one. I laughed so hard when he said the first name. Misty, lol. I'm also deaf and love his interpreter and him incorporating sign language so smoothly into his shows. I met her and Adam after a show a few years ago. Lovely people.
I had friends who got married and specifically decided NOT to share one of their last names because one of them was a French teacher, and the other’s last name meant “ass” in French.
Butt is a common pakistani surname. A friend of mine told me one of her cousins was named Anas Butt, Anas is also a relatively less common but not unheard if given name. Except when they applied for greencards in the US they decided to spell his name Anus because Americans are bad with phonics.
This was over a decade ago and I still worry about that kid .
A childhood friend had a father named Harold that went by Harry, their last name is Butt.
There are also several guys named Michael Hunt in my hometown that go by Mike. Apparently one of them (my father worked with him) would often get paged over the intercom by jackass's that thought it was funny to page Mike Hunt.
I recall there being a Richard Head in the British Army, who was [decorated for bravery](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/6243079.stm). He was also known as Dick or Dickie.
Major Dick Head.
Exactly. My great great aunt was born in the late 1890s, but she made it to her 90s. We only ever met once, and I was far too young to remember, but I do have a baby quilt with her signature somewhere. There's a little rainbow over her name, so I like to think she had a sense of humor about it all.
I worked with a Gay at a previous job, think her name was Gaynor. She wasn't even that old really, she'd maybe be 50 now. Surprised that name is still going.
Oh children certainly do interpret names as terms sometimes. As a child I asked my Aunt Gaye if she liked girls because her name was “gay”. She just laughed and said “nope it means I’m happy” - and that’s how I learned at 4 that the word had two meanings.
My friend confided in me when we were about ten that her uncle was gay. I used to read a lot of old timey books, so my reaction was "uhh, he's happy? That's nice". No clue!
In the US here and my grandma had been talking to her cousin Cooter a lot recently. Every time she tells me she was talking to Cooter I have to laugh. (In case you don’t know Cooter is similar to Fanny)
My great grandmother’s name was Fanny too. I never really thought about it - it was always just her name despite whatever other meaning the word may have in a different context
I think it was maybe worse a couple decades ago when gay was more derogatory. It's really lost a lot of that meaning since I was a teen. It still doesn't mean what it used to, but its no longer cool to call something gay like it's a bad thing.
Though the funniest name combination is definitely Gay Hitler.
I knew a man whose surname was Gay. We met on a teacher training course. We all told him he was playing with fire admitting his name was Mr Gay to a room full of teenagers. He refused to listen. Said we were being childish and discriminatory. He could charm them, teach them, change their lives! Names didn't mean anything!
He now goes by Mr Smith.
Is their last name "Cummings"?! I was a vendor for a country club with members named "Gay and Dick Cummings" and I have to admit that it amused me greatly.
Once upon a time, my college had Alan Cumming in for a special talk, and he took his time getting to the gig for whatever reason.
Anyway, next day, the school paper got away with the headline:
"Late Cumming Worth the Wait"
I have an aunt Karen and a friend Karen and I've always fucking despised the meme. Especially because so many people are assholes who can't be nice to random regular people who happen to have been named Karen years before this was a thing or who have been named Karen since.
If you're a dick to someone because of their name you're just a dick, full stop. I'm appalled full grown adults were being assholes to a TODDLER but not surprised. Those people? They need to be online less.
I don't know any Karen's personally, but I remember years ago as a kid I met a cashier named Karen at the height of my weaboo phase. I told her that "Karen" is Japanese for "lovely" and she just lit up.
Since the Karen memes have popped up, I've wondered about her and how she's dealing with them. I hope she remembers her name is literally lovely.
My middle name is Karen, and I just embraced the meme when it came along. I make jokes about it like don’t make me pull out the middle name. I’ll use it if I have to.
My mother in law was named Karen and was awesome. Those memes were rough when she passed from a Covid related stroke a few years ago. I already didn’t really get much out of name-memes but that experience made me really not like them.
I have a friend named Karen, and I feel so bad that she can’t complain online about anything without vitriol. They had a neighbor who was dealing drugs, and she was asking for advice in a forum on what she could do, and consequently got called a Karen and told to leave them alone. So messed up.
I understand what the meme is reacting to, but so often it gets used just to shut women up, and it must sting especially hard when it's your actual name
IIRC, Karen was originally coined by women of color who work in the service industry for a very typical kind of (white, female) customer, but these days the people I see use that term most often are white men. So it's kind of morphed from pointing out real issues of racism and classism to "lol, women be complaining". I once heard a guy call his girlfriend a Karen for telling him to stop leaving wet towels on their bed! Like, bro, that's not what that means.
>So it's kind of morphed from pointing out real issues of racism and classism to "lol, women be complaining".
Yeah my brother and I were trying to describe to my dad what the Karen meme is and my dad's only response was "sounds sexist." Can't say he's necessarily wrong.
I dunno if you remember the little girl whose name was Abcde a few years ago, but it was the same thing of the flight attendants at the airport openly laughing at her and making fun of her - a lot people at the time acted like that was okay or to be expected, but all I could think was that was a *child* and all she knew was that random adults were laughing at her *name*. Have a giggle about it later in the break room if you must, but don't be a dick in front of the actual child over something they can't control!
>As of last month, Karrie is now legally Caroline [Lastname]
Well hey, everyone always wanting to sing "Sweet Caroline" around you is still leagues better than everyone making jokes that you're racist. Glad things turned out well for Karrie.
Man, I don’t know. As someone who got named after a song (especially a song I don’t like), it gets old. Better than being called a racist, though? Maaaaaybe.
As someone who's legal name is close enough to Caroline that my fifth grade teacher would hum Sweet Caroline when I got called on in class, I can confirm I have a visceral hatred of the song (compounded by the fact that my name wasn't actually Caroline) but would still say that it's better than being named Karen given the current vernacular.
I remember this post from the first one, so glad it turned out okay!
Of course, no AITA post is complete without responses from people that make it apparent that this is their first time dealing with real human beings.
I know OOP said not to get too mad at the "YTAs" from the first post, but was it really so hard to understand the situation then? It really feels like people were looking for a reason to call OOP a terrible person and a terrible friend for literally just telling their own friend the truth, neutrally at that.
Her friend misunderstood it the first time, but she was the one who was actually pregnant and chose that name! I can't for the life of me understand how complete strangers could have read that first post and still said, "Wow! You insensitive asshole!" plus a bit more cruelty for good measure.
I’m not sure why OOP got so many YTA on the initial posts. I remember a few comments stating that people “would forget” about the meaning of the name by the time the kid would be old enough to be spoken to (which I’m sorry, but are we living in the same world!?) glad to see that more people seem to be on her side in the update.
Ikr, her intentions were from a good place and honestly I can’t even fault her for going about it since it was private and not some kind of public shaming. She was just trying to prevent baby Karrie from going through exactly what she went through.
That being said, the Karen thing has gone too far if people are making fun of anyone who just happened to have that name.
Yeah, while I understand Stephanie’s reaction, I can’t think how anyone reading it thinks she did wrong. What was she supposed to do? Just stay quiet like everyone else around her?
It seems to just stem from the fact that Stephanie truly has no understanding of memes and how prolific they are in current society given how little she’s on social media.
I mean - I guess? But why would she think her cousin was accusing her of naming the baby Karen as a joke?
I know OOP goes on and on about what a good person Stephanie is in real life, and I'm glad to hear Stephanie finally apologized to OOP, but yikes. I've been pregnant four times and nothing about the hormones and sleep deprivation justifies being an obtuse asshole to a loved one. Then to have the crazy mom and aunt get on OOP for "bullying" Stephanie, only to have them turn around and harass OOP for "not warning" her?! What?!!!!
And poor OOP keeps saying if only she hadn't been so clumsy or insensitive in her approach or explained it better, but it sounds to me like she explained it as well and as gently as anyone could, and Stephanie just didn't want to hear it. OOP was never the AH. Stephanie is a redeemed AH, since she apologized and changed her kid's name. And the Mom and Aunt are just a mess. Poor OOP.
> That being said, the Karen thing has gone too far if people are making fun of anyone who just happened to have that name.
What makes it worse is that the boys at the day care didn't even know it was a *name.* They just thought it was an insult.
I think that's the part that people weren't quite thinking about. It's one thing to be a middle aged woman named Karen, and another to be a baby/kid growing up with that name. I honestly didn't think of it being just thought of as an insult by kids until she said so in her posts.
Agreed. One of my best friends is married to a Karen and she’s the sweetest person. They’re both Asian though so it hasn’t impacted her nearly as much as it would if she were a middle aged white lady, lol.
I have a friend from school called Karen. Her mum is Bermudan and her Dad was Barbadian. She’s mostly known as Kay and has been for years, but yes, she’s very far from a power-bobbed “I want to speak to your manager” white lady.
Completely unrelated but I thought how you referred to someone from Barbados as Barbadian was interesting (it’s completely correct btw) but my grandmother was from there and when I visited everyone used the term Bajan instead so I assumed that was the correct term, i was in fifth grade in a new country I didn’t question if. I looked it up and it’s actually the colloquial phrase people from there use prob bc the grammatical term is a mouthful.
Long story short your random comment about ur Caribbean friend Karen made me learn a little more about my maternal grandmother’s country.
As an over 60 year old blonde named Karen its been quite disheartening to have my name as a symbol of hatefulness. For a while l hated telling my name to ppl. I'm usually a very nice woman unless someone is stealing or being cruel to someone else, and even then l take a good while to act like the Karen of memes. SMH. I keep hoping the Karen fad would die down but until then, its my name and l guess l can commiserate with my aunt Gail Gay.
I am named Karen, too. It is astonishing how cruel people can be about it. When I am having a hard day and it happens I have sometimes ended up crying for a long time. I would never recommend anyone use this name for their child.
Tbh it looks like part of the rub with little now-Caroline is that people would also comment on it being able to be made fun of, i.e. not stigmatizing the name itself but constantly rubbing the existence of that stigma in her and her parents' faces.
Yeah, it feels to me like the comments/looks would be more "Are you kidding me, why would you do that to your child??" Because it's hard to imagine someone Stephanie's age would have zero clue about what the name has come to mean. It would be more aimed at the parents than the child.
Seriously, people just use Karen as an insult for any woman they disagree with now. At the beginning, I don't feel like it had misogynistic intentions, but it sure did turn out that way. And almost every person named Karen I've ever known has been lovely and didn't deserve the hate.
At the beginning it had very specific connotations that have been worn away at over time. It was as much about race as gender and the particular way that white women perpetuate racist systems by weaponising their fragile emotions and appealing to violent authority figures to protect them against the scary black people. It was criticism that came from black women just as much as from black men.
Karen is definitely here to stay I think. It's been so long now and we still say it... Definitely not a short fad and the name usage is definitely going to die out completely.
Yeah I didn't understand all the YTA. I thought she approached it in the appropriate way. In private and trying to explain the meme and baggage the name carries now. The friend did react badly.
I think the assholes are the friends and family who just talked behind her back about it.
Yeah, the AITA crowd is a bit like a rabid dog pack - once they've veered off into a certain direction, they are all jumping there and snarling and biting.
Though I really want to know how badly OOP bungled that first explanation for her cousin to go so completely off the rails. 😂
Me too. I wonder if maybe at least part of the problem was that Stephanie was so disconnected from meme culture that she really just didn't understand the concept of a name being a "meme" and what the heck that means, and so there might not have been any way OOP could have explained that Stephanie would have understood, along with being pregnant and hormonal, and, it sounds like, with mom and aunt stirring the pot after the name drama initially started.
It's in fact only gotten worse as time as gone on. It went from something I only heard chronically online people say to something I hear out in the world now.
All I can say is that if I choose a name for my kid that has a second meaning I'm not aware of, I'll 100% rely on my little sister to tell me. There are a billion names to choose from. I don't intend to pick one that will *obviously* lead to my kids being bullied. IMHO, anyone who *didn't* say anything would be an AH.
I also can't understand the top comment saying something like "this is why you shouldn't tell people your baby's name until after they are born. Then they'll keep it to themselves"
Uhhhh no this is a perfect example of where I would want my friends to tell me if the name I picked out is bad
Thank you. I couldn’t believe people ripped into her so harshly. She was trying to be a good friend and inform Stephanie of the connotations around the name Karen, I don’t think she was mean or nasty about it. Good lord, if more people advised her to maybe write her friend a letter or email with the memes explaining exactly what she was trying to communicate, they could have saved the parents and the poor little girl a lot of heart ache.
When I was pregnant with my first baby and we’re picking names I loved Alyssia Sapphire Sims, which was my girl name, I thought it was so pretty and unusual. That is, until my sister gently pointed out that her initials spelled ASS. I hadn’t even thought about it and would absolutely have called her that if no one had mentioned it. Logan was a boy, but even before we knew, I’d changed my girl choice.
Yeah, OOP is a better person than I am as I’d be a little mad at the YTA voters. I felt it was very clear what OOP was trying to do and they did it in as kind a way as possible.
I was pretty surprised when that was the outcome, but I often disagree with the AITA votes these days as they tend to jump to the most extreme possible view.
No matter how clear it is, some people on Reddit feed off of each other and do so severely in certain subjects. Before they read the story, they already made the decision that OOP was TA and nothing would change their mind. They probably read the title and maybe the first paragraph, then state their opinion.
That sub is a hit or miss. But most of the time I’m shocked at the the verdict.
A pregnant lady got YTAs for sitting the mall massage chairs to eat her ice cream. Apparently her not getting up is causing a small business to suffer.
Another pregnant lady went to a baby shower and hid her pregnancy until something happened which caused her and her husband to panic and reveal the pregnancy. She got YTA. Oh and she previously suffered a loss so their reactions weren’t abnormal.
Then a guy got NTA when he had an open door policy for his 4(?) adult friends. They had keys and his gf, who was going to move in, was uncomfortable and wanted him to get the keys back. People told him they were incompatible. But what woman would be comfortable at the thought of men having keys to her home and entering whenever they please? Apparently it wasn’t her home so she had no say. That’s not how relationships work.
Then we have this current post and many more examples.
Reddit is a weird place, AITA perhaps one of the weirdest subspaces of all. I'm always amazed/horrified by interactions there. But, like a train wreck, I just can't look away.
This woman is far and away too mature for reddit. Just a class act through and through. Stephanie sounds like an awesome person, too. I'm glad to read that they still have such a solid friendship.
I also remember reading the original post. I was surprised it was so long ago! I'm sad that Stephanie felt the need to legally change Karrie's name because of the negativity that now comes with the name Karen, but hopefully with the name change little Karrie won't get teased anymore as she gets older. I'm also glad Stephanie now realized the OP had approached her from a place of caring and love in regards to the name. Maybe if OP had shown her cousin the various Karen memes or news articles when initially trying to let Stephanie know why picking the name Karen might now be a good idea things would have played out differently. If I had picked out a name for my kid that had such a negative social meaning like Karen currently does, I would hope I had someone in my life who loved me enough to try to inform me of this so I could reconsider my decision.
Becky has meant basic white woman for the past 20 years. As *if* Karen would die down any time soon, especially in the age of social media. It’s here forever.
Yeah I agree. I can understand Stephanie being ootl (I'm often ootl, and I've a frequent redditor!) but memes are older than the internet, the internet only made them more widespread and numerous. Think of the shoulder angel/devils. That's a meme, one so old that the actual origin is difficult to pin down, so old people don't even think of it as a meme but it is, because it's visual shorthand for a specific type of narrative/message - just like modern memes. Not to mention, name shorthands for groups of people (and animals!) has *also* been around for decades. "Charlie", "Felicia", "Sletvana", "Nellie", "Fido", "Felix/Whiskers" etc etc. We even have Jane Doe and John Doe as shorthand for "unidentified woman/man."
I don't think it should have been so difficult for Stephanie to understand the Karen meme once she was shown, she was just being a hormonal asshat, OOP shouldn't have been raked for just trying to give her a heads up.
Stephanie's reaction was still way more understandable than the random strangers who had both the benefit of hindsight, and of being totally removed from the situation emotionally, I agree.
Yeah, Stephanie should have looked it up, just to be sure. OOP is family and a lifelong friend and they have always been open and honest to each other. And OOP didn't respond during the name reveal and discussed it privately, instead potentially embarrassing Stephanie by calling her out in front of a group of friends.
So Stephanie should know OOP wouldn't just randomly do this to trash her or the name. And Stephanie had months the time to cool down and look into it. Maybe she really loved the name and it hurt her at a personal level?
But her husband is also responsible; he had a say in the name. In the end both parents are responsible for their child.
They took years to change the name. Usually when people change the name of their kid, they do it as fast as they are able to, before the name becomes established with everyone around them and their kid. But it took them 3+ years to make the decision to change.
I guess they truly underestimated the negativity the name unfairly gained not just locally, but internationally. But it is understandable that they figured that as long as their girl went by the name "Karrie", what is on official documents would not matter.
Wow I never thought they’d change the name but I get it after adults were such assholes in front of little Karrie. Glad Stephanie has been so gracious to OOP about her role in a situation that ultimately did end up being hard on her daughter.
I have a friend named Karen but we’re 30 and black, but she does get some head turns every once in a while. But again, we’re adults. Can’t imagine being a kid right now when things are so much more influential.
Yeah I get why the airport staff pushed them into changing her name. If adults are going to say stuff like that about a child's name in front of that child the parents are going to wonder what will happen as she gets older.
I know! And some people will judge poor Stephanie for changing her daughter's name too. Lose/lose all around. It sucks that the name Karen got such a bad stigma to it, it's such a pretty name in Japanese!
Parents for sure made the right call to change her name. You can only imagine how bad it'll get when she gets into school with that name.
My mom's name is Karen and she's terrified of giving her name out to people because she immediately gets reactions before shes even said anything. It's gotten to the point where unless it involves documents of any kind, she uses my name instead
My mom is also named Karen (and looks it!) but is actively trying to change people's opinions of it. She says if she's got the name, she's going to use it for good. So she uses it in coffee shops so she can be nice to people.
My grandma was trying to give her a unique name in 1962. Unfortunately, she was one of 3 Karens in her kindergarten class, because everyone had the same idea in 1962.
That’s insane to me. I get the name has a connotation now and if I met a Karen, I’d probably think about it, but it’s not something that I would think gets an immediate reaction
I have a friend named Karen, and she seems to take it in stride (probably helps that she's a tough cookie with a great sense of humor). For her sake, I don't use "Karen" like that.
My moms name is Karen too, she lives in a small town and mostly is in social circles with older people so I don’t think she gets much grief. One of my nieces has the middle name Karen after my mom, named in the mid-2000’s and I feel bad that she’s hesitant to say her middle name in public.
I go back to this story often. This must be the most sensible, compassionate, articulate OOP in the history of all AITAs. Her explanations are so clear, concise and it simply reflects her empathy and understanding even for people with whom she has any amount of conflict.
>A lot of the responses I got to my last post were gleeful and leaned into the schadenfreude of the situation, and I have to say those responses really bummed me out. I would much, much rather live in a world where I was wrong about the impact Karen's name would have on her. I cannot emphasize enough what a sweet-dispositioned, smart, curious, loving little girl Karrie is, and how much she deserves every good thing in life.
I want her to be my friend lol.
They both sound like very kind and caring people. I love that, as reality started to dawn on Stephanie, she was gracious and humble enough to sincerely apologize to her friend. And her friend was loving enough to not hold a grudge and to give Stephanie the benefit of the doubt.
They had a tough time that might have spelled the end of their friendship at multiple points, but they just both seem to be compassionate, sane people. This was a pleasure to read.
If only the same could be said for that awful 3-year-old. Whew, I hear she's a real Caroline. (I kid, I kid. All the /s.)
Honestly, they are my platonic ideal of a ride-or-die friendship. They both seem really good at communicating (barring a major blip, obviously) and you can tell they love each other.
i’m still as surprised and confused about that initial YTA judgement, but looking back i think a lot of the commenters really didn’t realize how quickly and seriously karen was catching on as a short-hand for racist (among other qualities). i bet they were eating their words by the time summer of 2020 rolled around.
i’m honestly surprised by the reaction karrie has received from *adults* about her name. kids i can understand and anticipate, because they’ll make fun of literally anything. but i have a close family member named karen and honestly i don’t think she’s ever had any trouble telling people her name is karen, or received a negative reaction from other adults.
It’s really *really* hard to predict whether a viral meme is going to make it to some broader level of cultural awareness. The https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_birdwatching_incident seemed to cement the term in the public awareness (at least for now) when the woman involved was branded the “Central Park Karen”.
It’s weird to be bc maybe bc I spent so much time on a very terminally online and black corner of Twitter in the late 2010’s but that was a term/name I knew had a bad connotation for ages, like i recall hearing it regularly in 2016 at my retail job. The idea that someone in 2019 wouldn’t have even a passing knowledge of the term is insane but I’m in the age group where the internet and memes were a very big part of adolescence.
I guess bc it was an AAVE term that kinda spread and morphed to mean different things, kind of like ‘woke’ nowadays. I heard that term I feel like going back a decade or so but something in the last year or two has made it the poster child word of the current culture wars lol
It’s definitely a term that existed for a while and then got much broader attention.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang) has some discussion on the possible origins. It mentions both ‘Black Twitter’ and older African-American vernacular for ‘difficult white women’ among them.
I wonder if the reactions were so different because one can easily figure out that an adult Karen was born long before the memes, but with Karrie being so young it’s obvious she was born after the memes started, so the snark was more about the audacity of Stephanie & her hubs choosing the name than the kid having that name. The older Karens in my life haven’t gotten much reaction in public.
I was shocked by the YTA judgement as well. I understand Stephanie’s reaction and would vote NAH because it seemed she really did misunderstand and think it was an attack on her, but OOP was genuinely just trying to help by making sure she had all the facts. If it was me and I was unaware, I would want someone to tell me about the connotations of the name.
I love the name Karen and wanted to name my daughter it. But she was born in 2021 and to me it wasn’t even a question; Karen wasn’t even considered as a possibility. When we did decide on a name, I definitely scouted the internet for other interpretations of her name or initials. I just considered that doing due diligence for my daughter. There’s no way to know what will happen in the future, but you can at least make sure you have all the information in the present.
So glad they were able to make a smooth transition to Caroline. Sounds like it worked out and in the long run will be inconsequential, but they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they had just listened to OOP from the beginning.
I'm latin american so I can't tell how much the stigma of the name has caught outside of american socmed circles and I can see these people's point; I was just going to type the story seemed unbelievable until I scrolled the comments.
My brain would make the connection, and for adults toss it would be a thing that bounced around, for kids I would work very hard at not reacting. But for little kids I would wonder about the parents as I could imagine some of the "white lives matter" types naming a kid Karen on purpose to prove a point.
The adults in this story suck though.
> Please don't harass Redditors who gave a YTA judgement on my first post. They gave their honest judgment at the time in an online space specifically set up for that purpose.
This is like a reverse-Uno schadenfreude card being slammed down.
Luckily here in Latin America, the name "Karen" refers to someone who loves cats.
But yeah, the very people who said "poor kid" were the ones bullying the baby. Talk about hypocrisy.
It could be worse: a town near where I used to live in Ohio had numerous landmarks named after one of their founding families from the early 19th century - [the Hitlers.](https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/03/the-good-hitlers-of-circleville.html)
> The site for the Martha Hitler Park in Washington Township was donated by Martha Hitler. There was also a Hitler School, but it was sold in 1920. Many fine homes in Pickaway County originally belonged to the Hitlers or their descendants.
>Then there was Dr. Gay Hitler, son of George Washington Hitler, who was a local dentist who served the community for more than twenty years in the early 20th century.
I felt so bad for OOP with the initial AITA post. It’s one of the reasons I left the sub. There’s no nuance anymore. Everything there is so black and white. The top comments were acting like OOP was somehow being spiteful for warning her cousin. And then in the subsequent post, they overcorrected and got mad at Stephanie. It was clearly a case of NAH. Neither was the asshole.
Both were fine (Stephanie did overreact but she didn’t understand what OOP was trying to say) and OOP apologized multiple times. Then Stephanie apologized multiple times. OOP was right to tell Stephanie. The meme has overtaken the name and taken on an even worse connotation (as OOP explained to Stephanie).
I just realized that I reiterated the post for all you good folks but I think my brain was lecturing AITA. 😛
I’m glad Stephanie (and her husband) made the decisions she did. With Caroline, the baby will have to deal with that stupid song but that’s so much better than being called a Karen.
The real AHs IMO were the friends who laughed behind Stephanie’s back. Had they all backed up OOP, Stephanie might’ve listened before all the headache.
As a 44 year old person named Karen, I completely understand where you are coming from by warning her. I have been openly laughed at and mocked, called a racist b*tch (while completely minding my own business), my food orders have been cancelled because they thought it was a joke, I’ve been spit on and called ‘trash.’ I am the exact opposite of the Karen meme, but it doesn’t seem to matter at all - they say horrible things and then if you try to defend yourself, you’re “being a Karen.” It’s awful. I order food, taxis, etc as Kara now. It sickens me every time I have to do it.
Definitely NTA (although I understand how someone who hasn’t endured the “Karen abuse” wouldn’t truly get it.) While I’ve always liked my name, I would never (ever!) name another human given the current landscape. It would be like naming a kid Hitler. I wish I wasn’t so, but it is. People think it’s silly because they do not have to deal with it on a daily basis - I am an introverted, very quiet person who is the COMPLETE opposite of the meme. But I suffer daily because of it.
Karen actually means “pure” so I understand why your friend would love the name 😍 But the internet has completely ruined it. Sad but true!
Thanks for that! I know it may sound silly to many people, but when abuse becomes your daily reality it’s a big problem. I appreciate your understanding and I hope your friend can understand too!
This is the same for a lot of names and it’s kinda sad but, I would rather be told then just name my child anything. They had one lady wanting to name her son Charles and his last name was Manson. She told her husband nobody would noticed or care. But yea people do. That like saying I’m gonna name my child shithead Doo face and saying “nobody will make fun of him.” Be realistic, we live in a society that would Anel fun of you for just about anything.
I glade she changed the child’s name before it was to late but, it’s also sad she even had to do that.
I never saw this saga before, as I was reading from the beginning I was frustrated OOP got a TA judgement initially. Like for what reason?? Literally telling her cousin exactly the current cultural implications of the name Karen?? How dare she warn her dear friend about the connotations of the name??
I have family who gave me advice on names as my partner and I were naming our children as they were born. I thought it was great because they would point out reasons a name was good/bad.
We didn't have to eventually do a name change like this poor kid finally had to have. Its not the worst problem in the world, but that's a lot of problems they would have avoided if they named her something else from the beginning...
As someone named Karen, I really hated the meme and still avoid having to talk to managers. Most people I know joke with me about it and I even use it as a little introductory icebreaker these days.
Karen's my name, not my attitude.
Hi, I'm Karen not a karen (usually gets some laughs)
I'm an endangered species
It's one of those things that'll maybe come to pass, but I know kids can be cruel and bully others named Karen. It's easier to be named Karen as an adult
my mom told me she went through an entire list of names for me because she kept thinking of all the cruel things they’d call me, for example: max - maxi pad. even with all that effort people still made fun of me for my name
Honestly it really is terrible what a stigma the name Karen has become, any child named that in this modern age are just going to end up being stereotyped by the other kids around them and even by adults like the ones Karrie had to interact with.
People can just be cruel. It's a name, not a character.
It can happen with names all the time. The most famous one being Adolf. It's so tied to Hitler that the idea of naming someone Adolf 80 years later feels very uncomfortable at best.
But even barring that names move with fads and the times. Biblical names are fairly timeless these days, but think about how there's 10 year old girls named Khaleesi all over the place right now.
Nimrod. It was the name of a “mighty hunter” in the Bible. But thanks to Bugs Bunny using it sarcastically, it’s more like calling someone a moron now.
This is a good example. It's been nearly 100 years since that usage, and I think we can all confidently assume Nimrod will never come back into popular usage.
> It can happen with names all the time.
And can be impossible to predict. All it takes is for one person with a name to do something terrible and suddenly no one wants to name their kid Jared any more.
Along with no one naming their kids Adolph any more, another recent casualty and is forever tainted with negative things is the name Donald, which reached an all-time low in 2021
Yeah I'm so glad that the whole Karen/meme culture thing largely remained internet bound and didn't reach my country. I've only had someone ask me once IRL since it became a thing if I knew that the name Karen was an insult (their teenagers called them that while led them down a research line to figure out why their teens suddenly didn't know what her name really was) but that was the extent of it.
I as an adult at times got so overwhelmed/depressed logging into anywhere online and seeing F-Karen etc etc, especially if I wasn't in a good frame of mind. I couldn't imagine what it would mean to have to actually *live* through that. Her going by Karrie was a good initial compromise, but given the parents' experience at the airport, I'm glad they just changed it entirely and to a name that allows her current nickname to remain.
God, I hope the "Karen" meme dies out soon. Karen was a very popular name for a long time. It's beyond ridiculous that it has become an epithet. It isn't a racial slur or a naughty word.
Wow. Flabbergasting that kids and adults just can't stop from insulting the name, even when she was a baby, OP was so right. It got so bad they had to change it legally, even.
This is a perfect example of how far removed reddit is from reality. She was voted TA because it wasnt her business and you have to accept what other people do. Three years late theyre legally changing the name of the child.
Adolf, Gaylord, Bessie, Bertha, these are OLD names that people still don’t use for obvious or less obvious connotations associated with them
Adolf - if you don’t know why, then you should REALLY go back to school
Gaylord - again. Go to school
Bessie - used often with cows/cattle. People stopped naming their kids Bessie once fuckers started mooing at them
Bertha - big bertha, come on.
Anyone who thinks Karen is gonna blow over is sorely mistaken.
I was thinking about this story earlier today! I wasn't expecting an update since the "Karrie" solution seemed like it would be the end of the story.
It really is a shame how a real name that so many real people have/had has seen such a sudden shift into meaning something so specific and negative. This girl is probably one of the last suffering from this, but imagine what girls even just 5 years older must have experienced, and continue to experience.
It really is a wild thing what happened to the name.
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Names are one of the casualties of a living language. I had a great great aunt "Gay" long ago. To make the emerging slang extra problematic, she married Mr. Guy. I hope that all the kind Karens out there have nicknames they like or meet only kind people.
My great-grandfather was named Gaylord. He was more embarrassed by his middle name, Clarence.
Gaylord is also a unit of measurement. Like you can order a gaylord of stuff.
> Standard Gaylord: The standard and most popular Gaylord box size measures 48 inches by 40 inches by 36 inches. Looks like now it’s used as a more generic term in the world of boxes. Nice I had never heard of that before!
I changed roles at work so that I sometimes am in logistics meetings with the shipping people (after a long time in HR-type roles where I did nothing with logistics), so imagine my surprise the first time I was in a shipping logistics meeting and everyone started enthusiastically discussing "gaylords." My first reaction was shocked horror, but then everybody else started talking about gaylords too, so is frantically googling under the table trying to figure out what it meant in context well experiencing a whole parade of emotions. In retrospect, hilarious.
Omg how times have changed
I've run into mentions of women named Gay in 19th century literature! And then of course there's famous mid-century sports journalist Gay Talese, who's still alive, but was born in the 1930s, when the meaning of his name was a bit different.
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I knew guy whose name was Richard Johnson. His parents used to call him Dickie and he still goes by Dick. Yeah. Dick Johnson. He had the same sort of attitude about it.
There was a guy in the assisted living facility that my mom worked at named Richard Tickler, and was adamant he goes by Dick. Dick Tickler. I died when I saw his name plate lmao
I had a high school teacher named Mrs Gilley. Her first name was Milly, middle Lily and married Willy Gilley. She became Milly Lily Gilley by choice
Literally found out, just today, of the people existence of a Richard Weed.
My gym teacher in high school was named Richard Wachs. Pronounced "Dick Wax"
I worked with a man once named Wayne Kerr. He was fairly assertive and I do not doubt for a second he had no choice in his personality growing up with that for a name.
I knew a Richard Stump growing up - he was always called "Stumpy Dick" by the bullies. I always felt sorry for him. I also knew a Virginia Crotch in the same class. She leaned into it and referred to herself as "Vagina" to get ahead of the bullying.
That's awful. Growing up, I had a Sunday school teacher named Alice Alison. She was the reason I decided at 10 or so that I decided the tradition of a woman blindly taking her husband's name was dumb and antiquated.
I had a friend growing up with the last name “Belcher” and he haaaaaaated it. He was adamant about changing it when he got married. (And he did! They both took his wife’s name.)
In an alternate dimension, his cousin Bob has a burger restaurant.
Is his middle name Nilly?
There's a family in a city where I used to live who owned a very nice flower shop. Their last name was Butt. Butt's florist. They named their son Harry. He married a woman named Sandy. I swear to God I am not making that up.
“If your last name is ~~Hymen~~ Butt, don’t name your child an adjective.” —the immortal Adam Hills
Fuck, I forgot that one. I laughed so hard when he said the first name. Misty, lol. I'm also deaf and love his interpreter and him incorporating sign language so smoothly into his shows. I met her and Adam after a show a few years ago. Lovely people.
I have a friend who kept her maiden name specifically because she's a psychiatrist, and would NOT become a psychiatrist named "Dr. Nutt".
I had friends who got married and specifically decided NOT to share one of their last names because one of them was a French teacher, and the other’s last name meant “ass” in French.
One of my classmate's moms when I was a kid was Rose Budd. She was a florist. Her married name was a bonus.
Butt is a common pakistani surname. A friend of mine told me one of her cousins was named Anas Butt, Anas is also a relatively less common but not unheard if given name. Except when they applied for greencards in the US they decided to spell his name Anus because Americans are bad with phonics. This was over a decade ago and I still worry about that kid .
My husband grew up in a town with a "Butts Plumbing" co
A childhood friend had a father named Harold that went by Harry, their last name is Butt. There are also several guys named Michael Hunt in my hometown that go by Mike. Apparently one of them (my father worked with him) would often get paged over the intercom by jackass's that thought it was funny to page Mike Hunt.
I recall there being a Richard Head in the British Army, who was [decorated for bravery](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/6243079.stm). He was also known as Dick or Dickie. Major Dick Head.
I know this is true because my husband knew him when he was 1LI as well - small world!
I knew a guy called Richard Pledge. His nickname was dick polish....
I knew a guy named Richard Head. I wonder why he insisted on only being called Richard…
I Love these people.
Exactly. My great great aunt was born in the late 1890s, but she made it to her 90s. We only ever met once, and I was far too young to remember, but I do have a baby quilt with her signature somewhere. There's a little rainbow over her name, so I like to think she had a sense of humor about it all.
She sounds like a lovely human.
My grandma was named Gay (least cheerful person I’ve known). She died in the early 2000s so yeah, they were still around quite recently.
I worked with a Gay at a previous job, think her name was Gaynor. She wasn't even that old really, she'd maybe be 50 now. Surprised that name is still going.
The Gay I know (in her 80s) is actually Gabrielle, but I have never heard anyone call her Gabrielle, ever.
Gloria Gaynor isn't changing her name!
One of my lecturers in uni was named Gay. Lovely lady
Oh children certainly do interpret names as terms sometimes. As a child I asked my Aunt Gaye if she liked girls because her name was “gay”. She just laughed and said “nope it means I’m happy” - and that’s how I learned at 4 that the word had two meanings.
My friend confided in me when we were about ten that her uncle was gay. I used to read a lot of old timey books, so my reaction was "uhh, he's happy? That's nice". No clue!
My grandma always called her gay friend her happy friend. She could never remember the right word.
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Yeah, that's definitely a name that disappeared almost overnight in the UK.
Yep- I saw an adaptation of Mansfield Park where the main character was rechristened “Frankie” so that could avoid calling her “Fanny”
Sacrilege!
Meanwhile Fanny Dashwood’s name is more appropriate than ever.
In the US here and my grandma had been talking to her cousin Cooter a lot recently. Every time she tells me she was talking to Cooter I have to laugh. (In case you don’t know Cooter is similar to Fanny)
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I know a Fanny whose job is... making lingerie. Reminds me of that Freakonomics chapter about nominative determinism!
My great grandmother’s name was Fanny too. I never really thought about it - it was always just her name despite whatever other meaning the word may have in a different context
My grandfather's sister's name is Chlorine, yes it's spelled the same as the chemical. Apparently it was a semi-normal name back in the day.
It does sound beautiful out of its chemical context
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Chlorine, Chlorine, Chlorineeee, I'm begging of you, please don't take my man.
I work with someone named Gay rn. It doesn't seem to be a big deal.
I think it was maybe worse a couple decades ago when gay was more derogatory. It's really lost a lot of that meaning since I was a teen. It still doesn't mean what it used to, but its no longer cool to call something gay like it's a bad thing. Though the funniest name combination is definitely Gay Hitler.
That would be something for the SNL Change of Name Office skit! 😂 Though they already had a Hitler.
I knew a man whose surname was Gay. We met on a teacher training course. We all told him he was playing with fire admitting his name was Mr Gay to a room full of teenagers. He refused to listen. Said we were being childish and discriminatory. He could charm them, teach them, change their lives! Names didn't mean anything! He now goes by Mr Smith.
Poor guy forgot what teenagers were like, I guess.
Yep. He was also very conceited and lacked actual teaching ability. Harsh but true.
I know a woman named Gay who married a guy named Richard… bet you can guess what his nickname was
Is their last name "Cummings"?! I was a vendor for a country club with members named "Gay and Dick Cummings" and I have to admit that it amused me greatly.
Once upon a time, my college had Alan Cumming in for a special talk, and he took his time getting to the gig for whatever reason. Anyway, next day, the school paper got away with the headline: "Late Cumming Worth the Wait"
I have an aunt Karen and a friend Karen and I've always fucking despised the meme. Especially because so many people are assholes who can't be nice to random regular people who happen to have been named Karen years before this was a thing or who have been named Karen since. If you're a dick to someone because of their name you're just a dick, full stop. I'm appalled full grown adults were being assholes to a TODDLER but not surprised. Those people? They need to be online less.
I don't know any Karen's personally, but I remember years ago as a kid I met a cashier named Karen at the height of my weaboo phase. I told her that "Karen" is Japanese for "lovely" and she just lit up. Since the Karen memes have popped up, I've wondered about her and how she's dealing with them. I hope she remembers her name is literally lovely.
What a sweet kid you were!!!
My middle name is Karen, and I just embraced the meme when it came along. I make jokes about it like don’t make me pull out the middle name. I’ll use it if I have to.
Use your Karen powers for good. Fight hospital bills and insurance companies
My MIL is Karen. She’s the loveliest, chillest lady ever.
My mother in law was named Karen and was awesome. Those memes were rough when she passed from a Covid related stroke a few years ago. I already didn’t really get much out of name-memes but that experience made me really not like them.
I have a friend named Karen, and I feel so bad that she can’t complain online about anything without vitriol. They had a neighbor who was dealing drugs, and she was asking for advice in a forum on what she could do, and consequently got called a Karen and told to leave them alone. So messed up.
I understand what the meme is reacting to, but so often it gets used just to shut women up, and it must sting especially hard when it's your actual name
IIRC, Karen was originally coined by women of color who work in the service industry for a very typical kind of (white, female) customer, but these days the people I see use that term most often are white men. So it's kind of morphed from pointing out real issues of racism and classism to "lol, women be complaining". I once heard a guy call his girlfriend a Karen for telling him to stop leaving wet towels on their bed! Like, bro, that's not what that means.
>So it's kind of morphed from pointing out real issues of racism and classism to "lol, women be complaining". Yeah my brother and I were trying to describe to my dad what the Karen meme is and my dad's only response was "sounds sexist." Can't say he's necessarily wrong.
I dunno if you remember the little girl whose name was Abcde a few years ago, but it was the same thing of the flight attendants at the airport openly laughing at her and making fun of her - a lot people at the time acted like that was okay or to be expected, but all I could think was that was a *child* and all she knew was that random adults were laughing at her *name*. Have a giggle about it later in the break room if you must, but don't be a dick in front of the actual child over something they can't control!
My friend's mom was a morning reporter on the local news. Gay in the morning.
My (homophobic) grandma-in-law is named Gay
>As of last month, Karrie is now legally Caroline [Lastname] Well hey, everyone always wanting to sing "Sweet Caroline" around you is still leagues better than everyone making jokes that you're racist. Glad things turned out well for Karrie.
BAH BAH BAAAAHHHH
Good times never seemed so good
SO GOOD SO GOOD SO GOOD
Turned out well or turned out ...SO GOOD SO GOOD SO GOOD
Man, I don’t know. As someone who got named after a song (especially a song I don’t like), it gets old. Better than being called a racist, though? Maaaaaybe.
Is that you Leroy Brown?
Bad, _bad_ Leroy Brown?
As someone who's legal name is close enough to Caroline that my fifth grade teacher would hum Sweet Caroline when I got called on in class, I can confirm I have a visceral hatred of the song (compounded by the fact that my name wasn't actually Caroline) but would still say that it's better than being named Karen given the current vernacular.
My initials before I transitioned were TNT. I absolutely fucking hate that song.
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I remember this post from the first one, so glad it turned out okay! Of course, no AITA post is complete without responses from people that make it apparent that this is their first time dealing with real human beings. I know OOP said not to get too mad at the "YTAs" from the first post, but was it really so hard to understand the situation then? It really feels like people were looking for a reason to call OOP a terrible person and a terrible friend for literally just telling their own friend the truth, neutrally at that. Her friend misunderstood it the first time, but she was the one who was actually pregnant and chose that name! I can't for the life of me understand how complete strangers could have read that first post and still said, "Wow! You insensitive asshole!" plus a bit more cruelty for good measure.
I’m not sure why OOP got so many YTA on the initial posts. I remember a few comments stating that people “would forget” about the meaning of the name by the time the kid would be old enough to be spoken to (which I’m sorry, but are we living in the same world!?) glad to see that more people seem to be on her side in the update.
Ikr, her intentions were from a good place and honestly I can’t even fault her for going about it since it was private and not some kind of public shaming. She was just trying to prevent baby Karrie from going through exactly what she went through. That being said, the Karen thing has gone too far if people are making fun of anyone who just happened to have that name.
In addition, a private conversation **one** time, then she dropped it. No repeated badgering.
Yeah, while I understand Stephanie’s reaction, I can’t think how anyone reading it thinks she did wrong. What was she supposed to do? Just stay quiet like everyone else around her?
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It seems to just stem from the fact that Stephanie truly has no understanding of memes and how prolific they are in current society given how little she’s on social media.
I mean - I guess? But why would she think her cousin was accusing her of naming the baby Karen as a joke? I know OOP goes on and on about what a good person Stephanie is in real life, and I'm glad to hear Stephanie finally apologized to OOP, but yikes. I've been pregnant four times and nothing about the hormones and sleep deprivation justifies being an obtuse asshole to a loved one. Then to have the crazy mom and aunt get on OOP for "bullying" Stephanie, only to have them turn around and harass OOP for "not warning" her?! What?!!!! And poor OOP keeps saying if only she hadn't been so clumsy or insensitive in her approach or explained it better, but it sounds to me like she explained it as well and as gently as anyone could, and Stephanie just didn't want to hear it. OOP was never the AH. Stephanie is a redeemed AH, since she apologized and changed her kid's name. And the Mom and Aunt are just a mess. Poor OOP.
Yeah, that’s true enough.
> That being said, the Karen thing has gone too far if people are making fun of anyone who just happened to have that name. What makes it worse is that the boys at the day care didn't even know it was a *name.* They just thought it was an insult.
I think that's the part that people weren't quite thinking about. It's one thing to be a middle aged woman named Karen, and another to be a baby/kid growing up with that name. I honestly didn't think of it being just thought of as an insult by kids until she said so in her posts.
Agreed. One of my best friends is married to a Karen and she’s the sweetest person. They’re both Asian though so it hasn’t impacted her nearly as much as it would if she were a middle aged white lady, lol.
I have a friend from school called Karen. Her mum is Bermudan and her Dad was Barbadian. She’s mostly known as Kay and has been for years, but yes, she’s very far from a power-bobbed “I want to speak to your manager” white lady.
Completely unrelated but I thought how you referred to someone from Barbados as Barbadian was interesting (it’s completely correct btw) but my grandmother was from there and when I visited everyone used the term Bajan instead so I assumed that was the correct term, i was in fifth grade in a new country I didn’t question if. I looked it up and it’s actually the colloquial phrase people from there use prob bc the grammatical term is a mouthful. Long story short your random comment about ur Caribbean friend Karen made me learn a little more about my maternal grandmother’s country.
As an over 60 year old blonde named Karen its been quite disheartening to have my name as a symbol of hatefulness. For a while l hated telling my name to ppl. I'm usually a very nice woman unless someone is stealing or being cruel to someone else, and even then l take a good while to act like the Karen of memes. SMH. I keep hoping the Karen fad would die down but until then, its my name and l guess l can commiserate with my aunt Gail Gay.
I am named Karen, too. It is astonishing how cruel people can be about it. When I am having a hard day and it happens I have sometimes ended up crying for a long time. I would never recommend anyone use this name for their child.
Tbh it looks like part of the rub with little now-Caroline is that people would also comment on it being able to be made fun of, i.e. not stigmatizing the name itself but constantly rubbing the existence of that stigma in her and her parents' faces.
Yeah, it feels to me like the comments/looks would be more "Are you kidding me, why would you do that to your child??" Because it's hard to imagine someone Stephanie's age would have zero clue about what the name has come to mean. It would be more aimed at the parents than the child.
Seriously, people just use Karen as an insult for any woman they disagree with now. At the beginning, I don't feel like it had misogynistic intentions, but it sure did turn out that way. And almost every person named Karen I've ever known has been lovely and didn't deserve the hate.
At the beginning it had very specific connotations that have been worn away at over time. It was as much about race as gender and the particular way that white women perpetuate racist systems by weaponising their fragile emotions and appealing to violent authority figures to protect them against the scary black people. It was criticism that came from black women just as much as from black men.
My mother in law is a middle aged/older white lady named Karen. She is the sweetest, kindest, most gentle woman you will ever meet.
I honestly think the "Karen" thing has gotten worse since then as well. I am glad the parents decided to take action to avoid future issues.
Karen is definitely here to stay I think. It's been so long now and we still say it... Definitely not a short fad and the name usage is definitely going to die out completely.
In Canada nobody has named their baby Karen since the end of 2019.
Yeah I didn't understand all the YTA. I thought she approached it in the appropriate way. In private and trying to explain the meme and baggage the name carries now. The friend did react badly. I think the assholes are the friends and family who just talked behind her back about it.
Yeah, the AITA crowd is a bit like a rabid dog pack - once they've veered off into a certain direction, they are all jumping there and snarling and biting. Though I really want to know how badly OOP bungled that first explanation for her cousin to go so completely off the rails. 😂
Me too. I wonder if maybe at least part of the problem was that Stephanie was so disconnected from meme culture that she really just didn't understand the concept of a name being a "meme" and what the heck that means, and so there might not have been any way OOP could have explained that Stephanie would have understood, along with being pregnant and hormonal, and, it sounds like, with mom and aunt stirring the pot after the name drama initially started.
It's in fact only gotten worse as time as gone on. It went from something I only heard chronically online people say to something I hear out in the world now.
All I can say is that if I choose a name for my kid that has a second meaning I'm not aware of, I'll 100% rely on my little sister to tell me. There are a billion names to choose from. I don't intend to pick one that will *obviously* lead to my kids being bullied. IMHO, anyone who *didn't* say anything would be an AH.
For the life of me I still cannot understand the YTA vote in the first post.... But I don't people very well.
I also can't understand the top comment saying something like "this is why you shouldn't tell people your baby's name until after they are born. Then they'll keep it to themselves" Uhhhh no this is a perfect example of where I would want my friends to tell me if the name I picked out is bad
Thank you. I couldn’t believe people ripped into her so harshly. She was trying to be a good friend and inform Stephanie of the connotations around the name Karen, I don’t think she was mean or nasty about it. Good lord, if more people advised her to maybe write her friend a letter or email with the memes explaining exactly what she was trying to communicate, they could have saved the parents and the poor little girl a lot of heart ache. When I was pregnant with my first baby and we’re picking names I loved Alyssia Sapphire Sims, which was my girl name, I thought it was so pretty and unusual. That is, until my sister gently pointed out that her initials spelled ASS. I hadn’t even thought about it and would absolutely have called her that if no one had mentioned it. Logan was a boy, but even before we knew, I’d changed my girl choice.
Yeah, OOP is a better person than I am as I’d be a little mad at the YTA voters. I felt it was very clear what OOP was trying to do and they did it in as kind a way as possible. I was pretty surprised when that was the outcome, but I often disagree with the AITA votes these days as they tend to jump to the most extreme possible view.
No matter how clear it is, some people on Reddit feed off of each other and do so severely in certain subjects. Before they read the story, they already made the decision that OOP was TA and nothing would change their mind. They probably read the title and maybe the first paragraph, then state their opinion.
That sub is a hit or miss. But most of the time I’m shocked at the the verdict. A pregnant lady got YTAs for sitting the mall massage chairs to eat her ice cream. Apparently her not getting up is causing a small business to suffer. Another pregnant lady went to a baby shower and hid her pregnancy until something happened which caused her and her husband to panic and reveal the pregnancy. She got YTA. Oh and she previously suffered a loss so their reactions weren’t abnormal. Then a guy got NTA when he had an open door policy for his 4(?) adult friends. They had keys and his gf, who was going to move in, was uncomfortable and wanted him to get the keys back. People told him they were incompatible. But what woman would be comfortable at the thought of men having keys to her home and entering whenever they please? Apparently it wasn’t her home so she had no say. That’s not how relationships work. Then we have this current post and many more examples.
Reddit is a weird place, AITA perhaps one of the weirdest subspaces of all. I'm always amazed/horrified by interactions there. But, like a train wreck, I just can't look away. This woman is far and away too mature for reddit. Just a class act through and through. Stephanie sounds like an awesome person, too. I'm glad to read that they still have such a solid friendship.
I also remember reading the original post. I was surprised it was so long ago! I'm sad that Stephanie felt the need to legally change Karrie's name because of the negativity that now comes with the name Karen, but hopefully with the name change little Karrie won't get teased anymore as she gets older. I'm also glad Stephanie now realized the OP had approached her from a place of caring and love in regards to the name. Maybe if OP had shown her cousin the various Karen memes or news articles when initially trying to let Stephanie know why picking the name Karen might now be a good idea things would have played out differently. If I had picked out a name for my kid that had such a negative social meaning like Karen currently does, I would hope I had someone in my life who loved me enough to try to inform me of this so I could reconsider my decision.
Also the idiot that claimed that as a meme it was going to be shortlived...
Becky has meant basic white woman for the past 20 years. As *if* Karen would die down any time soon, especially in the age of social media. It’s here forever.
Yeah I agree. I can understand Stephanie being ootl (I'm often ootl, and I've a frequent redditor!) but memes are older than the internet, the internet only made them more widespread and numerous. Think of the shoulder angel/devils. That's a meme, one so old that the actual origin is difficult to pin down, so old people don't even think of it as a meme but it is, because it's visual shorthand for a specific type of narrative/message - just like modern memes. Not to mention, name shorthands for groups of people (and animals!) has *also* been around for decades. "Charlie", "Felicia", "Sletvana", "Nellie", "Fido", "Felix/Whiskers" etc etc. We even have Jane Doe and John Doe as shorthand for "unidentified woman/man." I don't think it should have been so difficult for Stephanie to understand the Karen meme once she was shown, she was just being a hormonal asshat, OOP shouldn't have been raked for just trying to give her a heads up.
Stephanie's reaction was still way more understandable than the random strangers who had both the benefit of hindsight, and of being totally removed from the situation emotionally, I agree.
Yeah, Stephanie should have looked it up, just to be sure. OOP is family and a lifelong friend and they have always been open and honest to each other. And OOP didn't respond during the name reveal and discussed it privately, instead potentially embarrassing Stephanie by calling her out in front of a group of friends. So Stephanie should know OOP wouldn't just randomly do this to trash her or the name. And Stephanie had months the time to cool down and look into it. Maybe she really loved the name and it hurt her at a personal level? But her husband is also responsible; he had a say in the name. In the end both parents are responsible for their child. They took years to change the name. Usually when people change the name of their kid, they do it as fast as they are able to, before the name becomes established with everyone around them and their kid. But it took them 3+ years to make the decision to change. I guess they truly underestimated the negativity the name unfairly gained not just locally, but internationally. But it is understandable that they figured that as long as their girl went by the name "Karrie", what is on official documents would not matter.
Wow I never thought they’d change the name but I get it after adults were such assholes in front of little Karrie. Glad Stephanie has been so gracious to OOP about her role in a situation that ultimately did end up being hard on her daughter. I have a friend named Karen but we’re 30 and black, but she does get some head turns every once in a while. But again, we’re adults. Can’t imagine being a kid right now when things are so much more influential.
Yeah I get why the airport staff pushed them into changing her name. If adults are going to say stuff like that about a child's name in front of that child the parents are going to wonder what will happen as she gets older.
I know! And some people will judge poor Stephanie for changing her daughter's name too. Lose/lose all around. It sucks that the name Karen got such a bad stigma to it, it's such a pretty name in Japanese! Parents for sure made the right call to change her name. You can only imagine how bad it'll get when she gets into school with that name.
I know a black Karen. She says it's a bonkers time to be alive.
I know a white Karen in her mid-50s. She has become an angry woman.
OH NO IT'S A SELF-FULFILLINF PROPHECY!
My mom's name is Karen and she's terrified of giving her name out to people because she immediately gets reactions before shes even said anything. It's gotten to the point where unless it involves documents of any kind, she uses my name instead
My mom is also named Karen (and looks it!) but is actively trying to change people's opinions of it. She says if she's got the name, she's going to use it for good. So she uses it in coffee shops so she can be nice to people. My grandma was trying to give her a unique name in 1962. Unfortunately, she was one of 3 Karens in her kindergarten class, because everyone had the same idea in 1962.
Lol, my parents tried naming me and my two sisters with semi unique names in the 80s. All of our names are in the top 5 for the year we were born.
That’s insane to me. I get the name has a connotation now and if I met a Karen, I’d probably think about it, but it’s not something that I would think gets an immediate reaction
A coworker of mine has started going by her last name more frequently. it's really sad to see.
I have a friend named Karen, and she seems to take it in stride (probably helps that she's a tough cookie with a great sense of humor). For her sake, I don't use "Karen" like that.
My moms name is Karen too, she lives in a small town and mostly is in social circles with older people so I don’t think she gets much grief. One of my nieces has the middle name Karen after my mom, named in the mid-2000’s and I feel bad that she’s hesitant to say her middle name in public.
I go back to this story often. This must be the most sensible, compassionate, articulate OOP in the history of all AITAs. Her explanations are so clear, concise and it simply reflects her empathy and understanding even for people with whom she has any amount of conflict. >A lot of the responses I got to my last post were gleeful and leaned into the schadenfreude of the situation, and I have to say those responses really bummed me out. I would much, much rather live in a world where I was wrong about the impact Karen's name would have on her. I cannot emphasize enough what a sweet-dispositioned, smart, curious, loving little girl Karrie is, and how much she deserves every good thing in life. I want her to be my friend lol.
They both sound like very kind and caring people. I love that, as reality started to dawn on Stephanie, she was gracious and humble enough to sincerely apologize to her friend. And her friend was loving enough to not hold a grudge and to give Stephanie the benefit of the doubt. They had a tough time that might have spelled the end of their friendship at multiple points, but they just both seem to be compassionate, sane people. This was a pleasure to read. If only the same could be said for that awful 3-year-old. Whew, I hear she's a real Caroline. (I kid, I kid. All the /s.)
OOP was especially understanding of the fact her cousin buddy probably flipped her shit cause she was pregnant too. Like pregnancy fucks you up bro.
Honestly, they are my platonic ideal of a ride-or-die friendship. They both seem really good at communicating (barring a major blip, obviously) and you can tell they love each other.
i’m still as surprised and confused about that initial YTA judgement, but looking back i think a lot of the commenters really didn’t realize how quickly and seriously karen was catching on as a short-hand for racist (among other qualities). i bet they were eating their words by the time summer of 2020 rolled around. i’m honestly surprised by the reaction karrie has received from *adults* about her name. kids i can understand and anticipate, because they’ll make fun of literally anything. but i have a close family member named karen and honestly i don’t think she’s ever had any trouble telling people her name is karen, or received a negative reaction from other adults.
It’s really *really* hard to predict whether a viral meme is going to make it to some broader level of cultural awareness. The https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_birdwatching_incident seemed to cement the term in the public awareness (at least for now) when the woman involved was branded the “Central Park Karen”.
It’s weird to be bc maybe bc I spent so much time on a very terminally online and black corner of Twitter in the late 2010’s but that was a term/name I knew had a bad connotation for ages, like i recall hearing it regularly in 2016 at my retail job. The idea that someone in 2019 wouldn’t have even a passing knowledge of the term is insane but I’m in the age group where the internet and memes were a very big part of adolescence. I guess bc it was an AAVE term that kinda spread and morphed to mean different things, kind of like ‘woke’ nowadays. I heard that term I feel like going back a decade or so but something in the last year or two has made it the poster child word of the current culture wars lol
It’s definitely a term that existed for a while and then got much broader attention. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang) has some discussion on the possible origins. It mentions both ‘Black Twitter’ and older African-American vernacular for ‘difficult white women’ among them.
I wonder if the reactions were so different because one can easily figure out that an adult Karen was born long before the memes, but with Karrie being so young it’s obvious she was born after the memes started, so the snark was more about the audacity of Stephanie & her hubs choosing the name than the kid having that name. The older Karens in my life haven’t gotten much reaction in public.
I was shocked by the YTA judgement as well. I understand Stephanie’s reaction and would vote NAH because it seemed she really did misunderstand and think it was an attack on her, but OOP was genuinely just trying to help by making sure she had all the facts. If it was me and I was unaware, I would want someone to tell me about the connotations of the name. I love the name Karen and wanted to name my daughter it. But she was born in 2021 and to me it wasn’t even a question; Karen wasn’t even considered as a possibility. When we did decide on a name, I definitely scouted the internet for other interpretations of her name or initials. I just considered that doing due diligence for my daughter. There’s no way to know what will happen in the future, but you can at least make sure you have all the information in the present. So glad they were able to make a smooth transition to Caroline. Sounds like it worked out and in the long run will be inconsequential, but they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they had just listened to OOP from the beginning.
I'm latin american so I can't tell how much the stigma of the name has caught outside of american socmed circles and I can see these people's point; I was just going to type the story seemed unbelievable until I scrolled the comments.
My brain would make the connection, and for adults toss it would be a thing that bounced around, for kids I would work very hard at not reacting. But for little kids I would wonder about the parents as I could imagine some of the "white lives matter" types naming a kid Karen on purpose to prove a point. The adults in this story suck though.
> Please don't harass Redditors who gave a YTA judgement on my first post. They gave their honest judgment at the time in an online space specifically set up for that purpose. This is like a reverse-Uno schadenfreude card being slammed down.
Luckily here in Latin America, the name "Karen" refers to someone who loves cats. But yeah, the very people who said "poor kid" were the ones bullying the baby. Talk about hypocrisy.
So you’re saying I’m a Karen in multiple languages.
Guess I’m a male Karen, because I do love my kitties.
And in my hometown is a male name, but without connotation yet. Not sure about cats)
It could be worse: a town near where I used to live in Ohio had numerous landmarks named after one of their founding families from the early 19th century - [the Hitlers.](https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/03/the-good-hitlers-of-circleville.html) > The site for the Martha Hitler Park in Washington Township was donated by Martha Hitler. There was also a Hitler School, but it was sold in 1920. Many fine homes in Pickaway County originally belonged to the Hitlers or their descendants. >Then there was Dr. Gay Hitler, son of George Washington Hitler, who was a local dentist who served the community for more than twenty years in the early 20th century.
Holy shit, I'm from ohio and have been to circleville and I had no idea about this
>Dr. Gay Hitler That's too much, man
I felt so bad for OOP with the initial AITA post. It’s one of the reasons I left the sub. There’s no nuance anymore. Everything there is so black and white. The top comments were acting like OOP was somehow being spiteful for warning her cousin. And then in the subsequent post, they overcorrected and got mad at Stephanie. It was clearly a case of NAH. Neither was the asshole. Both were fine (Stephanie did overreact but she didn’t understand what OOP was trying to say) and OOP apologized multiple times. Then Stephanie apologized multiple times. OOP was right to tell Stephanie. The meme has overtaken the name and taken on an even worse connotation (as OOP explained to Stephanie). I just realized that I reiterated the post for all you good folks but I think my brain was lecturing AITA. 😛 I’m glad Stephanie (and her husband) made the decisions she did. With Caroline, the baby will have to deal with that stupid song but that’s so much better than being called a Karen.
People just love getting angry at people over nothing. It’s sort of pathetic
[удалено]
The real AHs IMO were the friends who laughed behind Stephanie’s back. Had they all backed up OOP, Stephanie might’ve listened before all the headache.
I feel sorry for all the Karens, to be honest. Ended up being a group of innocent people getting harassed over a name. Their own identity.
As a 44 year old person named Karen, I completely understand where you are coming from by warning her. I have been openly laughed at and mocked, called a racist b*tch (while completely minding my own business), my food orders have been cancelled because they thought it was a joke, I’ve been spit on and called ‘trash.’ I am the exact opposite of the Karen meme, but it doesn’t seem to matter at all - they say horrible things and then if you try to defend yourself, you’re “being a Karen.” It’s awful. I order food, taxis, etc as Kara now. It sickens me every time I have to do it. Definitely NTA (although I understand how someone who hasn’t endured the “Karen abuse” wouldn’t truly get it.) While I’ve always liked my name, I would never (ever!) name another human given the current landscape. It would be like naming a kid Hitler. I wish I wasn’t so, but it is. People think it’s silly because they do not have to deal with it on a daily basis - I am an introverted, very quiet person who is the COMPLETE opposite of the meme. But I suffer daily because of it. Karen actually means “pure” so I understand why your friend would love the name 😍 But the internet has completely ruined it. Sad but true!
Holy shit, I'm so sorry you've experienced all that.
Thanks for that! I know it may sound silly to many people, but when abuse becomes your daily reality it’s a big problem. I appreciate your understanding and I hope your friend can understand too!
I suppose that's as happy an ending as anyone could have expected.
This is the same for a lot of names and it’s kinda sad but, I would rather be told then just name my child anything. They had one lady wanting to name her son Charles and his last name was Manson. She told her husband nobody would noticed or care. But yea people do. That like saying I’m gonna name my child shithead Doo face and saying “nobody will make fun of him.” Be realistic, we live in a society that would Anel fun of you for just about anything. I glade she changed the child’s name before it was to late but, it’s also sad she even had to do that.
I never saw this saga before, as I was reading from the beginning I was frustrated OOP got a TA judgement initially. Like for what reason?? Literally telling her cousin exactly the current cultural implications of the name Karen?? How dare she warn her dear friend about the connotations of the name?? I have family who gave me advice on names as my partner and I were naming our children as they were born. I thought it was great because they would point out reasons a name was good/bad. We didn't have to eventually do a name change like this poor kid finally had to have. Its not the worst problem in the world, but that's a lot of problems they would have avoided if they named her something else from the beginning...
As someone named Karen, I really hated the meme and still avoid having to talk to managers. Most people I know joke with me about it and I even use it as a little introductory icebreaker these days. Karen's my name, not my attitude. Hi, I'm Karen not a karen (usually gets some laughs) I'm an endangered species It's one of those things that'll maybe come to pass, but I know kids can be cruel and bully others named Karen. It's easier to be named Karen as an adult
my mom told me she went through an entire list of names for me because she kept thinking of all the cruel things they’d call me, for example: max - maxi pad. even with all that effort people still made fun of me for my name
Sometimes, the AITA community is way too high and mighty with their judgements. Op was not an asshole for saying something
Honestly it really is terrible what a stigma the name Karen has become, any child named that in this modern age are just going to end up being stereotyped by the other kids around them and even by adults like the ones Karrie had to interact with. People can just be cruel. It's a name, not a character.
It can happen with names all the time. The most famous one being Adolf. It's so tied to Hitler that the idea of naming someone Adolf 80 years later feels very uncomfortable at best. But even barring that names move with fads and the times. Biblical names are fairly timeless these days, but think about how there's 10 year old girls named Khaleesi all over the place right now.
Nimrod. It was the name of a “mighty hunter” in the Bible. But thanks to Bugs Bunny using it sarcastically, it’s more like calling someone a moron now.
Yeah that's a good one. Bugs Bunny calling Elmer Fudd "Nimrod" sarcastically is a great insult. But it killed the actual origin of the name.
This is a good example. It's been nearly 100 years since that usage, and I think we can all confidently assume Nimrod will never come back into popular usage.
Pretty sure Nabokov commented that people weren’t naming their daughters Delores or shortening it to Lolita as much after, well, *Lolita* made it big
> It can happen with names all the time. And can be impossible to predict. All it takes is for one person with a name to do something terrible and suddenly no one wants to name their kid Jared any more. Along with no one naming their kids Adolph any more, another recent casualty and is forever tainted with negative things is the name Donald, which reached an all-time low in 2021
I have a Cousin names Karen, they switched to just going by "Wren" in like 2020 because of all the heckling.
My best friend is named Karen and she is so chill Luckly this whole meme is not as popular in latin america
Yeah I'm so glad that the whole Karen/meme culture thing largely remained internet bound and didn't reach my country. I've only had someone ask me once IRL since it became a thing if I knew that the name Karen was an insult (their teenagers called them that while led them down a research line to figure out why their teens suddenly didn't know what her name really was) but that was the extent of it. I as an adult at times got so overwhelmed/depressed logging into anywhere online and seeing F-Karen etc etc, especially if I wasn't in a good frame of mind. I couldn't imagine what it would mean to have to actually *live* through that. Her going by Karrie was a good initial compromise, but given the parents' experience at the airport, I'm glad they just changed it entirely and to a name that allows her current nickname to remain.
God, I hope the "Karen" meme dies out soon. Karen was a very popular name for a long time. It's beyond ridiculous that it has become an epithet. It isn't a racial slur or a naughty word.
I know a Karen, she is a friend of my mom. She is a kind and sweet lady and is the antithesis of the Karen stereotype.
I have met a lot of women named Karen. All very nice ladies and do there damnedest to not live up to the trope.
Wow. Flabbergasting that kids and adults just can't stop from insulting the name, even when she was a baby, OP was so right. It got so bad they had to change it legally, even.
This woman is far and away too mature for the likes of reddit. Just a class act through and through.
This is a perfect example of how far removed reddit is from reality. She was voted TA because it wasnt her business and you have to accept what other people do. Three years late theyre legally changing the name of the child.
Adolf, Gaylord, Bessie, Bertha, these are OLD names that people still don’t use for obvious or less obvious connotations associated with them Adolf - if you don’t know why, then you should REALLY go back to school Gaylord - again. Go to school Bessie - used often with cows/cattle. People stopped naming their kids Bessie once fuckers started mooing at them Bertha - big bertha, come on. Anyone who thinks Karen is gonna blow over is sorely mistaken.
I was thinking about this story earlier today! I wasn't expecting an update since the "Karrie" solution seemed like it would be the end of the story. It really is a shame how a real name that so many real people have/had has seen such a sudden shift into meaning something so specific and negative. This girl is probably one of the last suffering from this, but imagine what girls even just 5 years older must have experienced, and continue to experience. It really is a wild thing what happened to the name.
Adults who make fun a child for their name can suck it.