About Alexa

You don’t choose your name but it can shape you, not necessarily in a good way. When I was at school, and for years after, people thought it was hilarious that I shared a forename with the central character (played by Ronnie Corbett) in the inexplicably popular sitcom Sorry! and the phrase “Language, Timothy!” would follow me down many a corridor. Now parents of children called Alexa are calling on Amazon to replace the brand identity of its digital assistant with “a non-human name”, because their kids are being teased. Which sounds sensible – until you ask what, in an interconnected, multi-lingual, multi-cultural world, a non-human name really is. Pretty much any combination of syllables can be used to name a human somewhere in the world (although not so much in New Zealand), so protecting little Alexa will necessitate dumping on some other poor kid. I bet they call it Timothy...