Lazare certainly is - it's the French for Lazarus. Like the Italian, Lazzaro, it is still in use (although rare). Don't know if that's the source for Lazar, though - would the name of a guy raised from the dead by Jesus be popular in a East European shtetl?

Do you use your middle name, though? I don't see why you would ever need to, except on official documents, which, fortunately, can't mock you. I'm potentially biased by the fact that I have no middle name, of course, but don't go changing something as significant as a surname over a middle name! It might end up…

PLEASE tell me it's Schtupp. Please. My Blazing Saddles fan needs it.

I must still be a high-schooler mentally, because I laughed out loud at that. How unfortunate(ly hilarious).

Mmm, girls' names do tend to fall into a boring pattern, says this Rebecca (one of many at school. Seriously, parents...). And Roz is a good, punchy shortening, if you don't mind the Frasier connection.

Oh Lord, does that still happen? It was really common in the 1800s (in fact, it's practically a trope now in period fiction/drama to have a servant who has been renamed), but wow... Let's hope their precious young 'un will never have to face a slight inconvenience again.

Pretty much sums up the minefield of issues...

This is annoying but not surprising. Women are not encouraged to have deep passions or time-consuming hobbies, because historically that might have taken them out of the omestic sphere and their "duties" as wives and mothers.

I always assumed it was a bit like having "sand in your vag" (don't worry, I shuddered as I typed that). As in, something that makes you act all uncomfortable and fidgety. Never seen anything homophobic behind it (erm... so to speak).

The "kind of" is the reason I will probably end up in a convent of some sort... Or be Jessica Walter. I'm banking on the second.

If only. My Grandma, born in 1946, frequently asks me why I bother with those "old movies", while she feasts on violent crime procedurals. I spent a fair portion of the mid-2000s taping movies off TCM, tragic as it may sound. Even more tragically, I then discovered vodka tonics.

UK English, not an error. Well, sort of, I suppose, seeing as this is an American site. But I would certainly say I "burnt" something to a disc, just as I would say a house "burnt" down.

Excellent! Duly signed. I wish I'd done something so worthy in my own mis-spent adolescence instead of watching Jimmy Cagney movies and drinking.

If we're talking about having a guy in your actual bedroom, I would probably kill both the guy and myself before the end of the first week. Shudder. But as for mixed gender corridors, I thinka gender balance is, if anything, vital to keeping the peace. A few guys, a few girls, a bunch of different viewpoints - that…

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I'm not entirely sure how the need for this rule arose in the first place. Male cheerleading isn't like being in a Siberian gulag - if they, as a team, don't like "exaggerated or theatrical" moves, then surely they just won't do them? And if the cheerleaders do like them, they'll do…

Wow. There's something that's just so... commanding about that title. Don't even think about looking for some other kind of narrative in here, kid.

Yeah, but my point is that most acoustic "rap" covers are actually either a) shitty club music which belongs in a hideous manufactured cultural vacuum or b) the most misogynistic, violent examples of 1990s gangsta rap. Which, yes, is definitely chosen to emphasise the contrast between singer and content, but keeping…

Much as I enjoy some NWA songs (Express Yourself is one of my favourite "putting on my make up" tunes, which may well kind of be what this article is getting at, hmmm...), I raise eyebrows at any woman who feels like actually committing to covering them when one of their albums was just audio of them pretending to…

"I'm not a fan of the "white people should stick to liking white things and going to white areas" tone of the article and the comments. We don't need more cultural and physical segregation."

Well observed, especially the "referring to POC' POC-ness in an ironically forward fashion". I grew up in an area with very few visible minorities (semi-rural England), and so I was simply taught that it was rude to refer to peoples' race in general, probably for fear of looking like a bumpkin. Whereas a lot of my…