I'll admit it: I have a silly name. But that's the name my parents gave me and I like it just fine. I realize that spelling it all lower case (ginger coons instead of Ginger Coons) makes it seem even stranger to a lot of people. Some people ask why I do that. Some people question whether or not my name is real. The best response I've ever seen was when someone put my name in quotation marks, as if they didn't believe in it at all. So let's talk about proper nouns and why capital letters are political, not just grammatical.
I'm an English speaker, born and raised. My second language is French. Maybe if I'd learned some German earlier, I wouldn't have such a problem with capitalization. In English and French, proper nouns are capitalized, to the exclusion of other nouns, common nouns. That means that, as I learned in grade school, CN Tower, Toronto and Ginger (the name, not the spice) are all supposed to be capitalized because they're important things, places or people. On the other hand, grass, bird and air are not capitalized. That's the heart of the issue. I have difficulty believing that the CN Tower and I are so much more important than birds and grass that we deserve mixed case while they don't.
Why, then, do I not just refuse all capital letters? It's because I only have the power to decide for myself. Sure, I believe that my name should be on an equal footing with all the common nouns of the world, but you may not feel that way and I'm pretty sure the City of Toronto doesn't feel that way either. So I don't capitalize any part of my name. And like the womyn, grrls and other mis-spellers before me, I believe that sometimes, politics should come before proper grammar, but always thoughtfully and for good reason.
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I'm an English speaker, born and raised. My second language is French. Maybe if I'd learned some German earlier, I wouldn't have such a problem with capitalization. In English and French, proper nouns are capitalized, to the exclusion of other nouns, common nouns. That means that, as I learned in grade school, CN Tower, Toronto and Ginger (the name, not the spice) are all supposed to be capitalized because they're important things, places or people. On the other hand, grass, bird and air are not capitalized. That's the heart of the issue. I have difficulty believing that the CN Tower and I are so much more important than birds and grass that we deserve mixed case while they don't.
Why, then, do I not just refuse all capital letters? It's because I only have the power to decide for myself. Sure, I believe that my name should be on an equal footing with all the common nouns of the world, but you may not feel that way and I'm pretty sure the City of Toronto doesn't feel that way either. So I don't capitalize any part of my name. And like the womyn, grrls and other mis-spellers before me, I believe that sometimes, politics should come before proper grammar, but always thoughtfully and for good reason.
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