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The word Abd in Arabic means slave/servant [0], so should we ask anyone named Abdullah (God's slave) to change their name because it has the word slave in it? I
by curiousgal 6y ago
The word Abd in Arabic means slave/servant [0], so should we ask anyone named Abdullah (God's slave) to change their name because it has the word slave in it? It's not about using a word casually, it's about using it in an irrelevant context.
0.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_(Arabic) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_(Arabic)
- XorNot 6y agoApplying the term "slave" to yourself is pretty obviously quite different to building a construct and declaring something or someone else to be a slave. In much the same way that the n-word is most definitely not a term for people with my ethnic background to use, given it's history.
- curiousgal 6y agoI know foreign culture and all but no one ever chooses their birthname.
- XorNot 6y agoThey do choose whether they keep using it though.
- chrismorgan 6y agoSimilarly the very common surname Das in India and nearby countries, meaning slave or servant. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_(surname) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_(surname) says servant, but Hindi and Bengali speakers I know of would translate दास or দাস as slave more than servant.) I’m now amusing myself by imagining someone requesting that Das Keyboard rename their product…