Sociolinguist explains how 'Karen' went from a popular baby name to a stand-in for white entitlement

[catbyte]

June 13, 2020

By The Conversation

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But, as a sociolinguist who studies and writes about language and discrimination, I was also struck by the name given to Cooper in several headlines: “Central Park Karen.” On Twitter, the birder’s sister also referred to her as a “Karen.”

There was no confusion about what this meant: It was a label for a white woman who had used her privilege to threaten and try to intimidate a black man by calling the police.

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So how, exactly, does a name like Karen become such a powerful form of social commentary? And how does it come to mean so many different things at the same time?

First names tend to contain a range of social cues. An obvious one is gender. But they can convey other kinds of information too, including age, ethnicity, religion, social class and geography. The first name Karen peaked in popularity in 1965, which means that in 2020, most people named Karen are middle aged. Because roughly 80% of the U.S. population was white in the 1960s, it’s safe to assume that the proportion of people named Karen in 2020 is predominantly white.

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https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/how-karen-went-from-a-popular-baby-name-to-a-stand-in-for-white-entitlement/

[Kali]

1. I have a relative with the name

older than the peak demographic but the meme fits to a certain extent with her. slightly upper middle class, sorority in college, housewife, southern California, xtian, moderate republican, fairly clueless about her privilege...

[sanatanadharma]

2. Hence forth the clueless shall be renamed "Not-Caring"

Give Karen back her good name.

The clueless and "not-Caring" (pronounced not-caren) come in both genders but few geniuses.

[irisblue]

3. .

Kim Camatti (@KBCamatti) Tweeted:
@VicePresOfFun @mmpadellan Here it is https://t.co/5kyMGNMV2L

Link to tweet

[txwhitedove]

4. My granddaughter showed an Instagram of the "Karen" names by age. For my age 65-75 it

was "Gertrude". What, that was my aunt! Looked up names on time machine, and it should be Susan, Linda or Sandra. Pfft. They were teasing me about back seat driving

[delisen]

5. in 2006 a contemptuous label for assertive older women

Currently used to scapegoat an entire class of older women as racist.

Does serve to protect the Jamie Dimons and Rupert Murdochs and the so called winners in our economic and social system from scrutiny.

[msongs]

6. used to be on DU deragatory smears of an entire class of people was considered bad when

the overwhelming majority of people in that class are totally innocent of all charges