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This type of thing is less about hurting the feelings of individual people and more about your abstracter relationship with other cultures. I just think it's kind of gross to use a set of sounds that is cute and meaningless in your language, knowing it holds a sacred meaning that you don't understand in another (ancient, religious) culture. Encountering gentiles named Cohen always makes me want to roll my eyes totally out of my head. I guess people are free to do what they want or whatever, but it's harder to embody the idea of ignorance in a name than giving your child a name that literally is used as the title of a specific priestline in another culture.

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But, like, Minerva is one of my favorite names, and there were people who worshiped Minerva, and I'll never be one of them, so! I'm probably just being uptight.

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The word derives from a Semitic root common, at minimum, to the Central Semitic languages; the cognate Arabic word كاهن kāhin means "soothsayer, augur, or priest".
That's pretty neat.

This message was edited 10/31/2013, 11:01 PM