30378: Simidor (comment) Re: 30372: Chamberlain on names ending in 'ius' (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Daniel Simidor <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>

Why do middle-class Haitians make fun of people with
names that end in ?us? or ?ius??  For the same reason
slave owners inflicted those lofty Latin and Greek
names on their wretched slaves: to ridicule them.  The
psychology of oppression calls for demeaning and
dehumanizing one?s victims, the better to justify and
to feel good about their oppression.

It?s more pathetic than funny, but the fun such as it
is has endured for 300 years.  And to the extent that
in any given society the dominant ideas are generally
those of the dominant classes, Haitians who are only
doing slightly better than their counterpart in the
countryside laugh at quaint names like Scipion,
Césarion and Hilarion, Janus, Titus, Saintilus and
Horatius -- the same way they laugh at Creole/peasant
names like Asefi, Dyesifò, Jezila, etc.  Whereas
European names like Greg, Hans, Sven, Hugh, Dimitri,
Xavier, Nadège, Natasha or Patricia, come this much
closer to a certain Haitian ideal of whiteness.

In the same vein, American whites and complexé blacks
make fun of African and African-sounding names like
Malik, Latasha, Shaheena, etc.  And in New York,
bougie Haitian expatriates laugh at the new names
Haitians of humbler origins invent for their children:
names like Harbloudz that combine the first syllables
of the parents? first names -- in this case Harold and
Bloumène.

On the silly side, names that end in ?tius? or ?sius?
are onomatopoetically related to ... sexual moans --
as in ?so-and-so ap fè sius.?  One can imagine the
coarse adolescent humor...

Another reason has to do with why Haitian Creole shuns
the French endings ?us? and ?eux? and replaces them
with ?i? and the acute ?e?.  It is the height of
hilarity when some poor devil attempting to speak
French pronounces ?i? for ?u?, or vice-versa.  As in
?j?ai fait un lapsis? (lapsus) or in the sentence
?Monsieur le minis (ministre), vous savez que je n?ai
pas la coutime (coutume) de parler en piblic (public).
»

Making fun of differences is part of the human
condition.  But in our unreconciled Haitian society,
this kind of trivial pursuit is taken very seriously
and accounts for a good deal of our underdevelopment.



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