
Kevinism - rococode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevinism
======
Escapado
My name is Kevin. I'm 27 and I'm from (west) germany. Most people I get to
know will bring the topic up. I got a master's degree in physics and I have
heard people say something like 'your name doesn't fit your profile at all'
more times than I can count. I've seen girls in my sphere discard guys on
Tinder partly due to being named Kevin. People do joke about the name and
that's ok. It's not terrible but it isn't great either.

~~~
artfucker1996
same. being named kevin is a hard life in germany, but sometimes i can't help
but wonder if it actually benefited me in some way. it tought me a great
lesson about people being spiteful without realising it, just because it's
been established by the social environment that you live in. while some people
are just consciously being dickheads, others might have this negative stigma
associated with the name Kevin without ever meeting a person named Kevin. to
me this is fascinating and in my opionion extends in some ways to people being
racist or homophobic without ever meeting people of the "other group".

~~~
nothrabannosir
_> ... people being racist or homophobic without ever meeting people of the
"other group"._

In my limited experience, this is the norm, not an exception.

~~~
moomin
What is even more entertaining is that when they do know people from the other
group, they have a habit of treating them as shining exceptions to the rule,
not questioning whether or not the rule is even valid.

~~~
mieseratte
> they have a habit of treating them as shining exceptions to the rule, not
> questioning whether or not the rule is even valid.

That doesn't stop with the -ism's, I routinely run into programmers learning
about DRY and cargo-culting the hell out of it. People seize onto absolute
rules and superficiality, failing to consider deeper conceptual
dissimilarities that would negate the application of the rule.

------
splitbrain
What's missing in this article is the aspect of escapism. The mentioned names
Ronny and Mandy were especially popular in East Germany for kids born in the
late 70ies, early 80ies. I think many parents picked "exotic" names for their
kids in some sense of longing for the places they could never hope to see.
Maybe some simple way to be part of a larger world?

I could see the same mechanism in socio-economic disadvantaged parents. Their
world is limited by money, not borders, but they still want to be part of the
larger world.

------
mosselman
The funny thing is that Kevin is not a very praised name in general either:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/StoriesAboutKevin/](https://www.reddit.com/r/StoriesAboutKevin/)

“What is a Kevin?

A Kevin is someone who consistently or greatly shows a complete lack of
intelligence through incompetence of social and societal norms, or is
purposefully antagonistic in their poor decision making. Remember the kid in
your class who would constantly get in trouble for really dumb things? He was
probably a Kevin. Family members, friends, coworkers, and classmates can all
become Kevins.”

~~~
benj111
As a Brit, this is the Kevin that springs to mind

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_the_Teenager](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_the_Teenager)

Or perhaps an example is better

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dLuEY6jN6gY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dLuEY6jN6gY)

~~~
peteretep
Growing up, "kev" was a synonym for chav, townie, ned. At my waaaaaay-over-
privileged rugby-playing school, we called football "kevball".

~~~
ljf
Where I grew up, before chavs they were called 'Car Park Kevs' (though in my
wife's town they were called 'Barrys'

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dejawu
Fellow Kevin here. While I was doing a fellowship [0] at the US Census Bureau
last summer, I noticed a peculiar abundance of other Kevins working there. As
a joke, I created this presentation [1] about this phenomenon, which I ended
up accidentally showing the chief marketing officer.

He loved it.

[0]
[https://www.codingitforward.com/fellowship](https://www.codingitforward.com/fellowship)

[1]
[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/117Q3zuyWulkDGcGXp4Bd...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/117Q3zuyWulkDGcGXp4BdJP36Tx72Wk9CQEv8-Sen64Y/edit?usp=sharing)

~~~
nyolfen
you guys should unionize

~~~
iKevinShah
where do I sign up?

------
barking
You're better off sticking with the long established names of your culture. My
parents picked really boring names (as I thought) for our family. We were
named after our grandparents. We used to regularly chastise them for this when
we were young. Now I'm glad of it. I could have been called Calvyn.

------
wdroz
In some french-speaking countries, script-kiddies are sometime called Kévin.
I'm not sure if is a reference to the famous Kevin Mitnick or to Kevin from
the movie Home Alone or some kind of Kevinism.

These last years, I also hear people using "Jean-Kévin" instead.

------
colourgarden
"Kevin is not a name but a diagnosis" is a well known saying amongst school
teachers here in Germany.

~~~
Freak_NL
»Kevin ist kein Name, sondern eine Diagnose!«

Who says Germans don't have a sense of humour?

------
gpjanik
I can confirm that it applies to other countries of the region. I think it's a
result of this wild fascination with America that came after the fall of
Soviet Union. People westernised quickly and without much reflection upon the
process and are giving idiotic names to their kids. "Brajan" (phonetic for
Brian) and "Dżesika" (Jessica) are already memes in Poland.

------
King-Aaron
> The word "Alpha-Kevin" (combination of Alpha male and the given name), as
> being representative of a particularly unintelligent young person

Alpha-Kevin is a term I'll have to use more often

~~~
peterburkimsher
This is the first time I heard that about the name Kevin! I've heard a similar
stereotype about "Chad" though.

------
bonoboTP
In Hungary the equivalent would be Roma families naming their children after
foreign soap opera characters (e.g. Bobby [Ewing] in the 90s), footballers and
other famous people, especially Latin American ones. By law names have to
conform to Hungarian orthography (except if the parents have immigrant
background)

Examples: Rikárdó, Armandó, Rodrigó, Dzsenifer (Jennifer), Dzsesszika
(Jessica), Brájen (Brian), Dzsásztin (Justin), Brendon, Szamanta, Eszmeralda

Seems to be a universal thing across many countries that people in low socio-
economic classes (black people in the US or Roma in Eastern Europe) give more,
let's say, "unusual" names to their kids.

------
Tharkun
Naming things is hard. Naming people is harder. Many (most?) expecting parents
spend hours researching names online or in "1000 baby name ideas"-books. My
parents love my name. I hate it.

There are too many of us for names to be a unique identifier. First names are
too generic to say anything about us, and they're usually assigned at birth,
before any of our traits are known.

Family names are even worse; here's your father's last name glued on to yours,
for no apparent reason. Or maybe your mother's. Or, if you want, in Belgium, a
hyphenated version of both parents', but excluding any hyphenated part of
theirs. This somehow implies that family is important, but only a small part
of your family? I don't get that in a modern context.

Iain M Banks had an interesting take on multi-part names in The Culture, with
the naming scheme at least featuring a chosen name. But sadly also including
things you have no control over, like place of birth and parentage.

Letting everyone pick their own name would be nice. That's apparently already
possible in some parts of the world, but not everywhere. And often you can
only change it if your name is truly ridiculous or if you share a name with a
serial killer or some such.

~~~
Freak_NL
It depends on the jurisdiction. In the Netherlands changing your given name(s)
is possible if you can convince a judge of its negative impact on you. Gender
transitioning is an obvious rationale, but a well-worded explanation of why
your current name doesn't match who you are or damages you (e.g., past
traumatic experiences, abuse, but also a name simply not suiting you) tends to
suffice.

It's not something you can get done at a whim or frequently of course. The
judge will weigh the needs of society (i.e., to be able to consistently refer
to citizens by a constant name in various types of records) against your
personal motivation for changing names.

~~~
ummwhat
The US is much more liberal about this. You have to pay a fee and put in some
paperwork and make an announcement in a news paper with a certain amount of
readers and a judge will deny requests that violate a very limited set of
common sense criteria.

Sometimes the judges can get a bit lazy about actually filtering requests.
Jesus Christ literally lives in New York.

~~~
Freak_NL
Why would a judge in a nation that separates state and religion care about
someone calling himself Jesus Christ? Jesus is a common given name, and Christ
a common enough surname.

(Or Kris Kringle for that matter.)

~~~
ummwhat
It's not about "calling himself" Jesus Christ so much as convincing others
that he is literally Jesus Christ. Basically it's a form of fraud (or maybe
insanity, who knows)

One of the common sense criteria is you're not allowed to assume the identity
of well known public figures or entities.

------
Nursie
From a UK perspective, Kevin is not a very popular name either, and has a
bunch of negative associations.

"Kev" has been slang for someone from a low socioeconomic background, possibly
violent, often paired with "Sharon" or "Tracy" as a female equivalent.

So as an aspirational western name I'm not sure it works! At least for the
English...

~~~
Lio
Yep, back in the 1980s and 90s "kev" was indeed used as a somewhat derogatory
term in the UK.

The stereotypical kev was supposed to be seen wearing white, fluffy socks and
black shoes (terrible faux pas that) and driving a Ford Capri (badly).

At the time this greatly amused me as a child because my well to do Irish
grandfather, uncle and cousin were all called Kevin and nothing at all like
the stereotype. Not sure if the term "kev" existed as a mild insult in Ireland
but they were all aware of us using it... :D

------
jchampem
It also applies here in France, especially northern/eastern parts close to
Germany.

Well, not for Chantal, which is not a very exotic name here.

~~~
kbouck
Living as a (expat) Kevin in The Netherlands for many years and I've never
heard this. Might be that my friends are just polite. Interested to know if
this is well-known to those who grew up in The Netherlands.

~~~
lampenrad
Do you have an accent (preferably from the Anglosphere) that gives you away as
an expat? The stigma (at least in Germany) basically doesn‘t apply to native
English speakers (or at least much, much less so). Nobody here makes fun of
Kevin Costner for being named Kevin. The stigma is specifically about lower
class Germans frequently choosing certain foreign names for their kids.

------
cryptos
There was a funny story going on in 2005: Ferrero changed the face on the
packaging of the popular "Kinderschokolade" and many buyers didn't like the
new face and were hence calling the boy "Kevin". There was even a campaign
"weg mit Kevin" with 20.000 supporters, which handed over a petition to
Ferrero.

[https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/kinderschokolade-
wuetender...](https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/kinderschokolade-wuetender-
protest-gegen-das-neue-gesicht-a-389061.html)

Translation:

[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fwirtschaft%2Fkinderschokolade-
wuetender-protest-gegen-das-neue-gesicht-a-389061.html)

------
cluoma
Interesting. I moved to Germany several years ago and just assumed that the
Kevins were because of an interest in Anglo names. I didn't know they had a
stigma attached to them.

I'm trying to think of something equivalent from Canada, when I was younger,
but nothing is really springing to mind.

------
snarfy
I wonder how memes relate to this, like 'scumbag steve' and the various
'karen' jokes.

~~~
schnevets
Yeah, the Karen/Chad/Becky phenomenon really makes me cringe. You'd think with
recent culture shifts towards "wholesomeness" and "acceptance", turning
someone's name into an insult wouldn't have caught on.

------
jkmcf
I found this on my desk one day in the 90s...

[https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/16/opinion/observer-the-
kevi...](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/16/opinion/observer-the-kevin-
excess.html)

------
chaoticmass
The article mentions a Uncyclopedia satire article helped kick off media
coverage of this phenomenon. Here is the article:

[https://de.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Kevinismus](https://de.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Kevinismus)

------
Tomte
Another strange difference between countries' perceptions is the Swedish
princess Estelle's name.

I was on vacation in Sweden shortly thereafter, and while just about every
German thought the name atrocious, befitting a prostitute, all the Swedes
found it charming.

------
nailer
The article also mentioned Horst as having a particular association - what was
the association?

~~~
brazzy
Stupidity or clumsiness. Apparently it can't be tracked to any specific
origin, the name just went completely out of fashion and the association seems
to have emerged around 2000.

Here's a German article about it:
[https://www.welt.de/kultur/article163980590/Der-Herbst-
des-H...](https://www.welt.de/kultur/article163980590/Der-Herbst-des-Horst-
wie-ein-Name-zum-Witz-wurde.html)

------
toomanybeersies
Sounds a lot like Kyle in English speaking countries.

~~~
arethuza
Perhaps apart from Scotland where it is a fairly common part of place names
(e.g. Kyle of Lochalsh) - having said that, I don't think it's a very common
first name here, perhaps because of that?

~~~
Sean1708
I'm English and I've also never heard of the name Kyle having any kind of
prejudice, might just be an American thing?

~~~
snth
I've never heard of a negative stereotype about Kyle in America either.

~~~
thrownblown
Apparently you have yet to fall into the area 51 memehole.

The Kyle's are on the vanguard with their +10 Monster Energy buff

------
kschiffer
Fellow (German) Kevin here. I like how this topic is frequently being brought
up again in loose intervals as if it is important to remind everyone every
once in a while.

I can confirm that there is indeed a stigma associated with the name. As a
white young male though, being grumpy about such thing would be quite
disproportionate. In that sense, it sort of makes me get an idea of what it
could be like to be ridiculed for something one has no control or
responsibility about.

------
KatarinaGrumy
Oh, it refers not only to German people( Ukrainian people tend to give their
children exotic names too.

