(Image alt text: “Anonymous said to indigenousrph: i’m not that last anon but they asked for names for a martin sensmeier fc not plain white fc, lol and you call yourselves a place for help with indigenous characters? and give those names?”)
(In relation to this post)
Okay, I’m not one to typically engage in any kind of back and forth with rude anons on this blog. My own personal blog? Sure, I’ll do it time to time when I get them, but I’ve tried my best to always ignore rude anons on this blog, delete and block that’s it. Anons who are ignorant/uneducated but don’t seem like any harm? Sure, I’ll take the time to answer them and educate. Ones who are ignorant/uneducated but are rude and don’t seem to want to learn? Usually not.
But I’m doing it this time, because this is what really gets me, talking about Native names. Because I am so tired of seeing people naming their Native characters something like “MorningStar RedCloud” and thinking that makes you good, you’re not “”whitewashing”” them right? No. You just don’t know how Native names work, in real life.
Let’s not even mention that you’re talking about Martin Sensmeier here. Martin. An English name derived from the Latin “Martinus”. Sensmeier. Doesn’t have a lot of info on it, I’ll give you that but based on the forebearers site, it seems probably German in origin (also just “Meier” is a surname that’s German in origin so … you can count that as evidence too).
But I digress, and I say this with everything in me: NOT ALL POC HAVE “ETHNIC NAMES” AND ESPECIALLY NOT ALL NATIVES HAVE “ETHNIC NAMES”.
Most of us Natives? Don’t. Need other Native celebs besides Martin like this? Think Eddie Spears, Allyson Pratt, Irene Bedard, and even politicans like Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids. Or we do, but it’s alongside also an English name/other name (think Kawennahere Devery Jacobs, Alex Kawisenhawe Rice).
This is because us Natives have a large history with colonialism, that is frankly ongoing. Even the last residential schools only shut down in 1996. Some tribes didn’t have last names prior to colonization, and those that did many were forced still to take “white” (”white” in quotations bc it doesn’t …make us white) surnames. Given names, we were also forced to not use names in our own languages. Our languages were illegal. Our names were illegal. And if you had a name in your Native language and went to residential school, you best bet you were given a new name.
Why am I also not encouraging people to use names from Native languages? Because as I explained in this post (that I linked to that anon), most of the names in our languages tie back to one specific person or people in one specific person’s family tree/lineage because of our naming customs. Imagine you are a person who is using your name from your language, being yourself. Applying to jobs, and just trying to be a professional. Your name is uncommon, because there’s not really any common names in most of our languages, again it’s really one specific person or people in one specific person’s family tree. So when they google your name … they get a rp blog that has nothing to do with you. And not just that, but it’s uncomfortable as all hell to see that your name is stolen for that purpose. Especially, again, given the history of our names, our languages, our cultures, and colonialism.
I gave suggestions again in this post that I linked to the anon on finding last names that are common in our tribes, and I tried to do that for that anon with the Tlingit and Koyukon. But again, it’s not any of our’s fault that because of colonialism, names in our languages were stolen.
And it makes me uncomfortable as all hell, and from what I’ve heard on Native Twitter from other Native people, makes others uncomfortable as all hell to find people go out of their way to steal the names from our languages. And it definitely makes us uncomfortable as all hell to see some stereotypical name like “MorningStar RedEagle”.
Anyway, to anyone seeing this, feel free to reblog this as a psa, or again my original post that actually has real advice on naming Native characters. I guess this is joining the anon from last week in … highlighting an issue needing addressing so might as well.
PS: I’m literally Native and my name is Natalie. Also, every other admin on here is also Native. Are you even Native, or just stereotyping us? Because I would think you would know this stuff if you were.
baratheonpilled
izzy806
titsay
snowghoul
pixelskylines
turnnoffyourmind
andulkaphoto
dailybridgerton
