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Who's working class? Rather!

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    #32
    Samuel T. Cogley
    Registered Users Posts: 10,684 ✭✭✭✭Samuel T. Cogley




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    #33
    __Alex__
    Closed Accounts Posts: 473 ✭✭__Alex__


    Working class background, education would probaby nudge me into the ol' middle class bracket. But I got a great upbringing that instilled good values, so I just look at people's backgrounds that way; were they instilled with good values? Working, middle, upper, doesn't matter to me; people can't help what family they were born into. If you're a decent person, you're fine by me.


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    #34
    __Alex__
    Closed Accounts Posts: 473 ✭✭__Alex__


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    My Dad loves spotting these types that he knows at his local Aldi. (small West of Ireland town) He even often beelines for them to have a chat to ramp up their awkwardness. Brat. :D


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    #35
    jimgoose
    Registered Users Posts: 20,176 ✭✭✭✭jimgoose


    __Alex__ wrote: »
    My Dad loves spotting these types that he knows at his local Aldi. (small West of Ireland town) He even often beelines for them to have a chat to ramp up their awkwardness. Brat. :D

    Fock, it's like, Skobie O' Gill and the Lidl people! :D


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    #36
    __Alex__
    Closed Accounts Posts: 473 ✭✭__Alex__


    hatrickpatrick wrote: »
    Ok now this is an interesting one - I'd never have linked the 'acceptability' or 'likelihood' of choosing certain names for one's kids with socioeconomic class. If your view is a widely held one and has correlations, that's pretty fascinating. Even more so since you've chosen Gaeilge names - can you think of any names as Gaeilge which you would associate with lower socioeconomic classes or is choosing names in the native language something restricted to the middle / upper classes? And if so, how did this come about, where did such a division originate?

    Actually, I agree. Irish names transcend class in Ireland from what I can see. Grew up in an area with a mixture of working- and middle-class. Irish names were just widespread in general.

    It's a media-influenced trope, I think, that the middle class couples all have Irish-named children.


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    #37
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


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    #38
    __Alex__
    Closed Accounts Posts: 473 ✭✭__Alex__


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    Most people I know who have done that have done it to give themselves a measure of anonymity of Facebook to the randomer trying to find them. I hate Irish (I mean, really hate it) but have my Irish surname on Facebook for this very reason as I have an unusual surname that many wouldn't know the Irish for.


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    #39
    __Alex__
    Closed Accounts Posts: 473 ✭✭__Alex__


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    Same. Pops keeps an eye out for the M&S and Super Valu bags.

    Back in the day before the advent on online gambling, he also used to love observing people nervously trying to skulk into the local bookies.

    I've just realised how ruthless small town people like my pops are! :D

    I stayed in a luxury B&B last year, where the owner would be from upper-class Anglo-Irish stock. He unashamedly told us he shops in Aldi (wonder if our breakfast came from there! :eek:), no pretension at all. It's the middle-classes that care about this shit.


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    #40
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 26,052 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Names are used to display either the tribe you belong to, or the tribe you aspire to belong to. I went to school with a Cordelia, a Cecily, and a Jemima, among other traditional British names (I am English).

    Some would have had the names passed down and been named after a favourite aunt or whatever, but when you've met a Russian called Persephone it can really hit home how parental aspiration can be obvious to everyone, except of course, the parents.


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    #41
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


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    #42
    H3llR4iser
    Registered Users Posts: 4,027 ✭✭✭H3llR4iser


    Technical Middle Class: This is a new, small class with high economic capital but seem less culturally engaged. They have relatively few social contacts and so are less socially engaged.

    TL;DR: Nerds who are extremely good at doing stuff and paid accordingly, but feckin' awkward when it comes to speak to other people.

    Basically they created an entire new social class for the vast majority of IT workers, software engineers specifically :D.

    And before anyone goes "not true!", I am indeed a software engineer. I know what I'm talking about >_<


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    #43
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


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    #44
    5rtytry56
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,828 ✭✭✭5rtytry56


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.
    ^^THIS


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    #45
    ZeroThreat
    Registered Users Posts: 2,182 ✭✭✭ZeroThreat


    H3llR4iser wrote: »
    TL;DR: Nerds who are extremely good at doing stuff and paid accordingly, but feckin' awkward when it comes to speak to other people.

    Basically they created an entire new social class for the vast majority of IT workers, software engineers specifically :D.

    And before anyone goes "not true!", I am indeed a software engineer. I know what I'm talking about >_<

    Having attended professional accountancy body evening/weekend lectures, I'd have to say that many people working in finance areas seem even more socially inept than the techies.


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    #46
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 26,052 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    Unpronounceable and unspellable. I often wonder if there's an element of stressing one's racial purity involved!

    One of my aunts has a nice name, but my paternal great-grandmother changed her name from Meera to Moira when telling her neighbours about her new granddaughter. Obviously, her mixed race grandchildren and son-in-law were banned from the house, lest people in the village figure out that her daughter didn't marry a nice pale Catholic boy when they saw the pride of brown babies. My grandfather never met his in-laws.

    This makes me suspicious of people who determinedly adopt Irish or any other language names, when they have no other interest in either the language or culture.


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    #47
    Bambi985
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,274 ✭✭✭Bambi985


    I think in Ireland we're a lot more snobbish than we pretend to be, despite us all being a few generations away from poverty. The aspirational class thing comes out in the obsession with postcodes, increasingly obscure baby names as gaeilgethe D4 accent and the "what do you do?" question that crops up almost immediately on meeting someone new.


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    #48
    Zebra3
    Registered Users Posts: 13,859 ✭✭✭✭Zebra3


    Jaysus, lot of bitterness towards people giving their kids Irish language names.

    I know loads of people who have done so and there's not a hope in hell that the reason is to differentiate from some Nigerians. I mean of all the immigrants to be supposedly needing to differentiate from, Nigerians? Ffs. :rolleyes:

    Many of these people have been immigrants themselves or have returned home after being moved/born abroad because their parents emigrated and are proud of being Irish. Also the success of Riverdance has definitely helped increase people's pride in their own culture/language.

    But if faux accusations of racism make people feel better......


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    #49
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 26,052 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Zebra3 wrote: »
    Jaysus, lot of bitterness towards people giving their kids Irish language names.

    I know loads of people who have done so and there's not a hope in hell that the reason is to differentiate from some Nigerians. I mean of all the immigrants to be supposedly needing to differentiate from, Nigerians? Ffs. :rolleyes:

    Many of these people have been immigrants themselves or have returned home after being moved/born abroad because their parents emigrated and are proud of being Irish. Also the success of Riverdance has definitely helped increase people's pride in their own culture/language.

    But if faux accusations of racism make people feel better......

    Who's talking about Nigerians?

    Pft. Nobody is being accused of racism, just of being a little too caught up in their 'pedigree'. Some people would take it too far, and there's lots of people with the most Irish of Irish names who have no other engagement with the language. It's just rather pointed, and that's fine if it's just pride but it's also being used as a social signifier.


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    #50
    __Alex__
    Closed Accounts Posts: 473 ✭✭__Alex__


    Candie wrote: »
    This makes me suspicious of people who determinedly adopt Irish or any other language names, when they have no other interest in either the language or culture.

    Just speaking for myself here but I hated learning Irish and was terrible at it but I really love lots of Irish names. There is nothing more to it than that for me! :)


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    #51
    Atoms for Peace
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,888 ✭✭✭Atoms for Peace


    "Here you come to the real secret of class distinctions in the West--the real reason why a European of bourgeois upbringing, even when he calls himself a Communist, cannot without a hard effort think of a working man as his equal. It is summed up in four frightful words which people nowadays are chary of uttering, but which were bandied about quite freely in my childhood. The words were: The lower classes smell."
    http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/7.html


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    #52
    __Alex__
    Closed Accounts Posts: 473 ✭✭__Alex__


    __Alex__ wrote: »
    Just speaking for myself here but I hated learning Irish and was terrible at it but I really love lots of Irish names. There is nothing more to it than that for me! :)

    To add, I think the reason many people call their children Irish names despite not being too engaged with Irish culture is simply down to knowing the names. Hear a name somewhere, like it, call your kid that. That's how many kids get named and in Ireland, you are exposed to all kinds of Irish names because it's, well, Ireland.


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    #53
    Bambi985
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,274 ✭✭✭Bambi985


    Strange really, I remember being a kid in the 80s/early 90s and there were 42 Niamhs and Aoifes and Daithis and Aislings in any given school year. Common as muck, those names were. About as exotic as a smack in the face.


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    #54
    jimgoose
    Registered Users Posts: 20,176 ✭✭✭✭jimgoose


    H3llR4iser wrote: »
    TL;DR: Nerds who are extremely good at doing stuff and paid accordingly, but feckin' awkward when it comes to speak to other people.

    Basically they created an entire new social class for the vast majority of IT workers, software engineers specifically :D.

    And before anyone goes "not true!", I am indeed a software engineer. I know what I'm talking about >_<

    "They" created furk-all. Class is something you're either born with, or you end up working for the RTE. :D


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    #55
    Zebra3
    Registered Users Posts: 13,859 ✭✭✭✭Zebra3


    Candie wrote: »
    Who's talking about Nigerians?

    Feel free to scroll back through the thread.


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    #56
    irish horse
    Registered Users Posts: 25 ✭irish horse


    The rich are rich because the spend like their poor.the poor are poor because the spend like their rich.well it's what I have noticed quite a bit.


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    #57
    Yourself isit
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,257 ✭✭✭Yourself isit


    mikemac2 wrote: »
    A farmer is a landowner and a labourer

    Find a class for that ha :pac:

    Petit bourgeoisie


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    #58
    Yourself isit
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,257 ✭✭✭Yourself isit


    While permabear's list was good I think it possible ignored inherited capital(s) a bit much


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    #59
    Yourself isit
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,257 ✭✭✭Yourself isit


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    I'm afraid that you are where you came from, old bean. If you're the type to buy his own furniture then you are not one of us.


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    #60
    Yourself isit
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,257 ✭✭✭Yourself isit


    irish horse wrote: »
    The rich are rich because the spend like their poor.the poor are poor because the spend like their rich.well it's what I have noticed quite a bit.

    Yeh. That's why roman abromovich and Elton John are so poor now.


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    #61
    Lia_lia
    Registered Users Posts: 6,691 ✭✭✭Lia_lia


    Bambi985 wrote: »
    Strange really, I remember being a kid in the 80s/early 90s and there were 42 Niamhs and Aoifes and Daithis and Aislings in any given school year. Common as muck, those names were. About as exotic as a smack in the face.

    I have one of those names. Was born in the late 80's. Lived abroad for a lot of my childhood thinking I had the most exotic name going, feckin hated it too as no one could pronounce it. Then moved here and I was the 4th girl in my class with that name. :rolleyes:


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