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There's a tendency to use first names to refer to women in professional settings or political power that is somewhat infantilizing and demeaning. I doubt anyon

by paulmd 6y ago

There's a tendency to use first names to refer to women in professional settings or political power that is somewhat infantilizing and demeaning. I doubt anyone really deliberately sets out to be like "haha yessss today I shall elide this woman's credentials", but this is one of those unconscious gender-bias things that is commonplace in our society and is probably best to try and make a point of avoiding. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/07/when-last-comes-first-gender-bias-names https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/07/when-last-comes-fir... https://metro.co.uk/2018/03/04/referring-to-women-by-their-first-names-and-men-by-their-surname-is-a-form-of-gender-discrimination-7325551/ https://metro.co.uk/2018/03/04/referring-to-women-by-their-f... (etc etc) I'd prefer they used "Hopper" instead, in the same way they have chosen to refer to previous architectures by the last names of their namesakes (Maxwell, Pascal, Ampere, Volta, Kepler, Fermi, etc). I'd see that as being more professionally respectful for her contributions. But yes I very much like the idea of naming it after Hopper.

hderms 6y ago
I feel like there's a non-zero chance they named it Grace instead of Hopper so their new architecture doesn't sound like a bug or a frog or something. You could be right, though
trynumber9 6y ago
Hopper was already reserved for an Nvidia GPU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopper_(microarchitecture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopper_(microarchitecture)
- paulmd 6y ago
  Yeah, I dunno what is going on with that, I assumed that had changed if they were going to use the name "grace" for another product. I guess I'm not sure if "Hopper" refers to the product as a whole (like Tegra) and early leakers misunderstood that, or whether Hopper is the name of the microarchitecture and "Grace" is the product, or if it's changed from Hopper to Grace because they didn't like the name, or what. Otherwise it's a little awkward to have products named both "grace" and "hopper"...
bloak 6y ago
Perhaps you're being downvoted because it's a tangent. It's a real phenomenon, though, and an interesting one. Of course there are many things that influence which parts of someone's full name get used, and if the tendency is a problem it's a trivial one compared to all the other problems that women face, but, yes, in general it would probably be a good idea to be more consistent in this respect. Vaguely related: J. K. Rowling's "real" full name is Joanne Rowling. The publisher "thought a book by an obviously female author might not appeal to the target audience of young boys". There's another famous (in the UK at least) computer scientist called Hopper: Andy Hopper. So "G.B.M. Hopper", perhaps? That would have more gravitas than "Andy"!
adrian_b 6y ago
I do not believe that referring to women using the first names is somewhat infantilizing and demeaning. Unfortunately, at least in most Western societies, using the first names is the only way to refer unambiguously to women. According to the tradition, in most Western countries the women do not have their own family names, but use either the family name of their father until marriage, or the family name of their husband after that. So while Grace is the computer scientist, Hopper is her husband and Murray is her father. Using the name Grace makes clear who is honored. Nowadays, in many places there are laws that allow women to choose their family names or to combine the family names. Nevertheless, the old tradition is still entrenched, so searching for a certain woman, when the last information about her is many years old, can be difficult due to unpredictable family name changes. Ideally, a human should keep forever the family name used at birth and the parents should choose one of their family names for the children.
- ashtonbaker 6y ago
  So to be clear, "Hopper" would unambiguously refer to Vincent Foster Hopper in this context, and not famed computer scientist Grace Hopper? Not Vincent Foster's father? What if he was adopted and began life with a different family name? Why make this distinction specifically for women, so that a last name cannot possibly refer to them?
- pezezin 6y ago
  Ideally, a human should keep forever the family name used at birth and the parents should choose one of their family names for the children. I prefer the Spanish way, have two family names. We have been doing it for centuries, it baffles me that other countries find it so difficult to adopt a similar system.

by paulmd 6y ago

hderms 6y ago

I feel like there's a non-zero chance they named it Grace instead of Hopper so their new architecture doesn't sound like a bug or a frog or something. You could be right, though

trynumber9 6y ago

Hopper was already reserved for an Nvidia GPU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopper_(microarchitecture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopper_(microarchitecture)

paulmd 6y ago
Yeah, I dunno what is going on with that, I assumed that had changed if they were going to use the name "grace" for another product. I guess I'm not sure if "Hopper" refers to the product as a whole (like Tegra) and early leakers misunderstood that, or whether Hopper is the name of the microarchitecture and "Grace" is the product, or if it's changed from Hopper to Grace because they didn't like the name, or what. Otherwise it's a little awkward to have products named both "grace" and "hopper"...

bloak 6y ago

Perhaps you're being downvoted because it's a tangent. It's a real phenomenon, though, and an interesting one. Of course there are many things that influence which parts of someone's full name get used, and if the tendency is a problem it's a trivial one compared to all the other problems that women face, but, yes, in general it would probably be a good idea to be more consistent in this respect. Vaguely related: J. K. Rowling's "real" full name is Joanne Rowling. The publisher "thought a book by an obviously female author might not appeal to the target audience of young boys". There's another famous (in the UK at least) computer scientist called Hopper: Andy Hopper. So "G.B.M. Hopper", perhaps? That would have more gravitas than "Andy"!

adrian_b 6y ago

I do not believe that referring to women using the first names is somewhat infantilizing and demeaning. Unfortunately, at least in most Western societies, using the first names is the only way to refer unambiguously to women. According to the tradition, in most Western countries the women do not have their own family names, but use either the family name of their father until marriage, or the family name of their husband after that. So while Grace is the computer scientist, Hopper is her husband and Murray is her father. Using the name Grace makes clear who is honored. Nowadays, in many places there are laws that allow women to choose their family names or to combine the family names. Nevertheless, the old tradition is still entrenched, so searching for a certain woman, when the last information about her is many years old, can be difficult due to unpredictable family name changes. Ideally, a human should keep forever the family name used at birth and the parents should choose one of their family names for the children.

ashtonbaker 6y ago
So to be clear, "Hopper" would unambiguously refer to Vincent Foster Hopper in this context, and not famed computer scientist Grace Hopper? Not Vincent Foster's father? What if he was adopted and began life with a different family name? Why make this distinction specifically for women, so that a last name cannot possibly refer to them?
pezezin 6y ago
Ideally, a human should keep forever the family name used at birth and the parents should choose one of their family names for the children. I prefer the Spanish way, have two family names. We have been doing it for centuries, it baffles me that other countries find it so difficult to adopt a similar system.