A Lack of Security or of Cultural Capital? Acculturative Conservatism in the Naming Choices of Early 20th-Century US Jews
Past research demonstrates a marked tendency toward “acculturative conservatism,” whereby immigrants select given names for their children that are established—that is, popular in an earlier generation of the native population. Prior research has generally understood such conservatism as reflecting...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Oxford University Press
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109436 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6271-0708 |
| _version_ | 1811093343177801728 |
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| author | Zhang, Jiayin Obukhova, Elena Zuckerman Sivan, Ezra W |
| author2 | Sloan School of Management |
| author_facet | Sloan School of Management Zhang, Jiayin Obukhova, Elena Zuckerman Sivan, Ezra W |
| author_sort | Zhang, Jiayin |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Past research demonstrates a marked tendency toward “acculturative conservatism,” whereby immigrants select given names for their children that are established—that is, popular in an earlier generation of the native population. Prior research has generally understood such conservatism as reflecting a lack of “mainstream” cultural capital; established names are popular among immigrants because they are unaware of current fashion. But we argue and show that even when they are aware of current fashion, immigrants may favor established names to affirm their membership in the host society. Comparing given names among World War II Jewish servicemen (born around 1918) with given names in the general US population in 1920, we show that the parents of these servicemen exhibited a pattern of acculturation that was (1) selective (in avoiding popular native names with strong Christian associations, and embracing certain unpopular native names) and (2) conservative (in their tendency to favor established names relative to newly popular names). In addition, our key finding is that these parents favored those established names whose popularity was rising and avoided those whose popularity was declining. This suggests that Jewish immigrants were aware of mainstream fashion, but deliberately chose established names so as to express their membership in American society. More generally, this result indicates that the acculturation process is as much about gaining social acceptance as about becoming adept in the mainstream culture. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:43:44Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/109436 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:43:44Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | Oxford University Press |
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| spelling | mit-1721.1/1094362022-09-29T15:47:02Z A Lack of Security or of Cultural Capital? Acculturative Conservatism in the Naming Choices of Early 20th-Century US Jews Zhang, Jiayin Obukhova, Elena Zuckerman Sivan, Ezra W Sloan School of Management Zuckerman Sivan, Ezra W Past research demonstrates a marked tendency toward “acculturative conservatism,” whereby immigrants select given names for their children that are established—that is, popular in an earlier generation of the native population. Prior research has generally understood such conservatism as reflecting a lack of “mainstream” cultural capital; established names are popular among immigrants because they are unaware of current fashion. But we argue and show that even when they are aware of current fashion, immigrants may favor established names to affirm their membership in the host society. Comparing given names among World War II Jewish servicemen (born around 1918) with given names in the general US population in 1920, we show that the parents of these servicemen exhibited a pattern of acculturation that was (1) selective (in avoiding popular native names with strong Christian associations, and embracing certain unpopular native names) and (2) conservative (in their tendency to favor established names relative to newly popular names). In addition, our key finding is that these parents favored those established names whose popularity was rising and avoided those whose popularity was declining. This suggests that Jewish immigrants were aware of mainstream fashion, but deliberately chose established names so as to express their membership in American society. More generally, this result indicates that the acculturation process is as much about gaining social acceptance as about becoming adept in the mainstream culture. 2017-05-30T19:35:26Z 2017-05-30T19:35:26Z 2016-04 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0037-7732 1534-7605 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109436 Zhang, Jiayin; Zuckerman, Ezra W. and Obukhova, Elena. “A Lack of Security or of Cultural Capital? Acculturative Conservatism in the Naming Choices of Early 20th-Century US Jews.” Social Forces 94, no. 4 (April 2016): 1509–1538 © 2016 The Author(s) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6271-0708 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sf/sow025 Social Forces Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Oxford University Press SSRN |
| spellingShingle | Zhang, Jiayin Obukhova, Elena Zuckerman Sivan, Ezra W A Lack of Security or of Cultural Capital? Acculturative Conservatism in the Naming Choices of Early 20th-Century US Jews |
| title | A Lack of Security or of Cultural Capital? Acculturative Conservatism in the Naming Choices of Early 20th-Century US Jews |
| title_full | A Lack of Security or of Cultural Capital? Acculturative Conservatism in the Naming Choices of Early 20th-Century US Jews |
| title_fullStr | A Lack of Security or of Cultural Capital? Acculturative Conservatism in the Naming Choices of Early 20th-Century US Jews |
| title_full_unstemmed | A Lack of Security or of Cultural Capital? Acculturative Conservatism in the Naming Choices of Early 20th-Century US Jews |
| title_short | A Lack of Security or of Cultural Capital? Acculturative Conservatism in the Naming Choices of Early 20th-Century US Jews |
| title_sort | lack of security or of cultural capital acculturative conservatism in the naming choices of early 20th century us jews |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109436 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6271-0708 |
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