No Name Calling week was declared and celebrated this year in January. Early next year it will be celebrated from January 21-25, 2008.
Why? Words hurt.
The younger a hurt person is, the more of an effect it has . In schools, it is routine for some students to be the target of frequent taunts based on their weight, height, intelligence, and sexual orientation/gender expression. Particularly, in British schools, bullying, by the seniors , was the norm, and you were supposed to emerge, unscathed, and "bloody but unbowed" , as they say, through that.
Sometimes this resulted in a permanent scar on the person's psyche. It affected the students studies, confidence, self respect and attitude towards the world.
"The Misfits", written by James Howe, is a novel about four best friends who band together to face seventh grade in the face of such name calling and bullying. It describes how they formed a group and fought school elections on a no-name-calling platform, and impressed their principal so much, that they initiated a "No-name-calling-Day" at the school.
First celebrated in 2004, the No-name-calling week has been celebrated every year since then , and has consisted of educators, parents and schools working together and discussing and implementing ways to reduce and remove bullying in the community.
While young children today may learn by observation , it is interesting to note that "name-calling" in some form, has always existed, the world over, historically speaking.
Calling people names, or Name-calling has absolutely nothing to do with knowing somebody's name and calling out to him or her. But it has everything to do with calling out to someone in a very offensive way, so as to be hurtful.
In the olden days, people did not sport easy names like Bill, Al, Dick or , for that matter, George. They had impressive sounding, multi syllable names like Cornelius, Olivio, Marlborough, Spencer, Abraham, Mountbatten , Sidebottom, Trescothick and such, which basically made it difficult to get up and abuse the person easily, without getting suitably tongue-tied.
The Greeks and Romans, not to speak of the Egyptians , were very fond of names that nobody could spell or pronounce. But then most people did not take English 101 in those days. You had names like Persepolis, Polyxena, Atridae, Philoctetes, Neoptolemus, Telamonian Ajax, Laomedon, Tyndareus,-just to name a few, and we ar actually mentioning the easier ones here.
Calling out to "you XXXX XXXX Neoptolemus Ajax" or whoever, wasn't either practical or cool. And so they resorted to duels. While name calling was all about dishonoring someone, duels, (which by today's criminal standards could be deemed culturally sanctioned murder), were all about "restoring one's honor" and an inextricable part of daily life.
While Greeks and Romans could embellish duels, with human sacrifices on the side in the names of various assorted Gods (who commanded them to do that), huge wars like the Trojan War , were often conducted on a matter of individual honor and prestige, and neighboring countries joined the fracas. The more the merrier.
Closer to home, it is not unusual to realize that several prominent political figures were , through the various ages of history, often involved in duels for the most flimsiest of reasons. Abraham Lincoln nearly had to slash at a tax auditor with a saber because he claimed in print that the man smelled badly. Mark Twain , while working as a newspaperman in Nevada in 1864 challenged a rival. he managed to escape injury only through the guile of his "second" (a sort of "assistant or substitute dueler " in today's parlance). According to reports from "Bloody Bladensburg," an infamous dueling field near Washington, D.C., many of our country's politicians brutally mowed each other down over totally unconfirmed rumors. San Francisco , at one time had the dubious honor of being the Dueling Capital of the nation.
While it's been a long time since someone went around Washington DC waving a sword , name calling continues actively to this day.
Rush Limbaugh, even took on Chelsea Clinton when she was, would you believe, thirteen, and called her a White House Dog. Later, in a effort , at name-calling people his own size, he then attacked Democratic leader Tom Daschle and actually called him "El Diablo" or "the Devil Incarnate", complete with the music of "Devil in a Blue Dress" wafting in the background. He even further explained that Daschle could be Satan in soft-spoken disguise. He even questioned his patriotism by calling him Hanoi Tom, and Tokyo Tom.
While powerful rulers from the Middle Eastern countries often use completely unparliamentary language to describe Bush, Venezuelan President Chavez got into the act by calling Bush, El Diablo.
Recently , referring to answers given by Presidential hopefuls (2008) to questions about them meeting leaders of Iraq,Venezuela,Cuba etc, Barack Obama called Hilary Clinton, a "Bush-Cheney Lite".
