Sensitivity Over Names

Re “Name Flap Ruffles Feathers,” Column One, Nov 12: Even though my name is Olsen (from my stepfather) I am of fully Japanese stock and appear so. Racial issues and the “political correctness” phenomenon have been of some interest to me from a minority’s perspective.

So, keeping my ethnic perspective in mind, shouldn’t we really change the language a bit more? When it’s a bit cool outside do we really have to say “It’s a bit nippy out there?” And what does it mean when, in every grocery store, there is, on the shelves for all to see, a product called Cheese Nips? Shouldn’t such casually slanderous name-calling be expunged from the language? And isn’t it intolerable to imply that some people should be soaked in cheese and cooked to crunchy crisp? (The fact that these little crackers are yellow can’t be mere coincidence, could it?)

I rest my case.

JAMES OLSEN

Montebello

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The digger pine is now the gray or foothill pine because “digger pine is insulting” because it refers to “Native Americans digging roots.” I have never heard of the digger pine, but if I had I would have thought it referred to a native Australian form of the pine tree.

The end of the last century was referred to as “the Gay Nineties” (the “gay” not referring to anyone’s sexual persuasion). The end of this century will probably be known as the “Please Don’t Hurt My Feelings Nineties.”

TERRENCE BEASOR

Santa Monica