TromboneChat

During my brief West Texas band directing career I had to take the marching band by bus to away football games. 

It seemed to be a tradition to decorate the buses with "go team" type slogans and artwork, done in some sort of white paint that could be easily washed off later.

However, the Monday after one such game I was summoned to an important meeting at the principal's office. The math teacher, mother of one of the band members and a volunteer chaperone for these bus trips was in an absolute batguano rage because I had "allowed" the students to write "TEANNA" on one of the bus windows and "just left it there for the entire trip, for the whole world to see!"

So what does it mean, I asked? 

"Well, it's NOT a girl's name!" she said.  She refused to speak it out loud.

I got the sense that the principal didn't know what it meant either, but I didn't ask.

"OK. If I see it in the future, I'll have it removed," and that was then end of it until the next outrage over something equally insignificant.


I never did find out what it meant. I will say that I don't believe it's a respelling of "T & A" which was semi-naughty but tame enough to hear on television and read in popular magazines.


So... does anyone know what it means?  Remember this was back in 1983, so the names of certain performers who show up in current internet searches who were not even born back then are unlikely solutions.





 

I strongly caution against searching for "Teanna" which is indeed at least one poor soul's name...

Wonder if it is supposed to be "Tejana", which would be a Latino Texan

Quote from: robcat2075 on May 19, 2017, 10:43AM
"Well, it's NOT a girl's name!" she said.

Teanna Trump ... Maybe?  Or a misspelling of Teyana Taylor?

No idea ... But is seems to be  'Much Ado About Nothing'.

Quote from: BGuttman on May 19, 2017, 11:37AMWonder if it is supposed to be "Tejana", which would be a Latino Texan

You can be a Tejano without being Latino. Historically the Tejano were Hispanic, with no connection to Latin America.

Quote from: MrPillow on May 19, 2017, 10:16PM Historically the Tejano were Hispanic, with no connection to Latin America.

 

Historically, Texas was settled by Mexican Hispanic people, as it was part of Mexico for a very long time.

Mexico was and is a "Latin American" country, so those Mexican-descended Tejanos would certainly be connected to Latin America.

Quote from: BillO on May 19, 2017, 10:08PM Teanna Trump ... Maybe?Timeline doesn't work with robcat's high school teaching career. Ms. Trump' earliest credit on IMDB is from 2014 and her birth year is listed as 1995.

Quote from: JohnL on May 19, 2017, 10:41PMTimeline doesn't work with robcat's high school teaching career. Ms. Trump' earliest credit on IMDB is from 2014 and her birth year is listed as 1995.

And... it's not a name, anyway.  That was the one thing the irate person would reveal.

Quote from: robcat2075 on May 19, 2017, 10:37PM

Mexico was and is a "Latin American" country, so those Mexican-descended Tejanos would certainly be connected to Latin America.


The problem is that Mexico wasn't a country when the colonization of Tejas under New Spain took place and the idea of Hispanic Tejanos emerged. They were Spanish, not Mexican, and fell outside the geographical bounds that are generally used to define Latin American and Latino, terms which both emerged later than the designation of Tejanos. Depending on when and where you look at the population and its demographics, you could be Tejano without being Latino, Hispanic Texan while French, or Mexican without being hispanic.

Quote from: MrPillow on May 19, 2017, 11:07PMThe problem is that Mexico wasn't a country when the colonization of Tejas under New Spain took place and the idea of Hispanic Tejanos emerged. They were Spanish, not Mexican, and fell outside the geographical bounds that are generally used to define Latin American and Latino, terms which both emerged later than the designation of Tejanos. Depending on when and where you look at the population and its demographics, you could be Tejano without being Latino, Hispanic Texan while French, or Mexican without being hispanic.

Perhaps true... but does it matter?  Some Latina (Mexicana, for example) high school students from Texas in the early 1980s might have referred to themselves as "Tejana."  But... I doubt they would come up with TEANNA to mean Tejana.  It seems more likely that it was code for T&A. 

In the excursion of trying to figure out what the bus window graffiti meant, the pedantry is entirely useless

Quote from: MrPillow on May 19, 2017, 11:07PMThe problem is that Mexico wasn't a country...

A preposterous argument. Independent or not, it's a part of the Americas where they speak the "latin" Romance language of Spanish.  That's what Latin America is about.

People who came directly from Spain and settled in the Texian colonial territory were not settling in Mexico. That area was only Mexico for 14 years if they were north of the Rio Grande, and most of them arrived before that happened. Some came after, while Texas was a Republic, and others came while it was a state. Many of them were Criollo with strong ties to Louisiana territory and culture. The idea of Latin America appeared in 1861, and by that time Mexico was entirely politically and geographically separated from Texas. Obviously this is not to say that Tejanos are NEVER Latin American. While the term first applied to the non-Mexican hispanics, the term certainly now includes mostly people descendent from Modern Mexico or other Latin American countries.

I remember as  a child making fun of other children and being made fun of myself. Fortunately I am the kind of person who isn't bothered by that but some kids get upset over really stupid things..... I remember me and  a few others teasing a particular girl by doing nothing other than elongating some of the vowel sounds in her name and writing in down in funny places phonetically, rather that how she actually spelt it.

I think the only reason we did it was because it was funny to see this girl in a rage over something so stupid. Perhaps a similar thing happened in your scenario? The response of the parent saying "its NOT A girls name!" Could have been quite literally, that that spelling and pronunciation bothered a particular child and the parent was aware of how the child felt? I have no idea really, that does seem a longshot.

Probably the only thing we can be sure of is that the meaning of the word, according to those kids at that time, is not very important now. 

I think I would be wise to get some sleep.. 

Quote from: MrPillow on May 19, 2017, 11:30PMIn the excursion of trying to figure out what the bus window graffiti meant, the pedantry is entirely useless
Curiosity is only a bad thing when it's used to feed angst or hatred or prejudice ... etc.
 
Curiosity about anything else is at the very least a slight positive.

Quote from: bigbassbone1 on Yesterday at 12:19 AMI remember as  a child making fun of other children and being made fun of myself. Fortunately I am the kind of person who isn't bothered by that but some kids get upset over really stupid things..... I remember me and  a few others teasing a particular girl by doing nothing other than elongating some of the vowel sounds in her name and writing in down in funny places phonetically, rather that how she actually spelt it.
 
I think the only reason we did it was because it was funny to see this girl in a rage over something so stupid. Perhaps a similar thing happened in your scenario? The response of the parent saying "its NOT A girls name!" Could have been quite literally, that that spelling and pronunciation bothered a particular child and the parent was aware of how the child felt? I have no idea really, that does seem a longshot.
A longshot, but plausible and no more a longshot than any other plausible speculation, and less of a longshot from any less plausible speculation. That's why these games/puzzles are also useful exercizes.

Quote from: bigbassbone1 on Yesterday at 12:19 AM...Perhaps a similar thing happened in your scenario? The response of the parent saying "its NOT A girls name!" Could have been quite literally, that that spelling and pronunciation bothered a particular child and the parent was aware of how the child felt? I have no idea really, that does seem a longshot.


But would that have been too obscene to explain to me in the privacy of the principal's office?

That's basically the problem I have with any of the solutions that I can think of or that anyone has proposed.

To listen to her, this was an absolutely mortifying breach of something or other that couldn't be said out loud. To look at her, she was like a stock photo image of church lady self-righteousness.

(stock photo of church lady)




In retrospect, I think this was very poorly handled by the principal. If there was a problem it should have been made clear to me what it was, right? Is it normal for a principal to let someone make this sort of hysterical complaint without explaining what the hysteria is all about?

Quote from: robcat2075 on Yesterday at 08:06 AM
(stock photo of church lady)


In retrospect, I think this was very poorly handled by the principal. If there was a problem it should have been made clear to me what it was, right? Is it normal for a principal to let someone make this sort of hysterical complaint without explaining what the hysteria is all about?

Career teacher here. The principal handled the situation incompetently. I'm not sure that headmaster Dumbledore would approve of your church lady photo.

Quote from: robcat2075 on May 19, 2017, 10:53PMAnd... it's not a name, anyway.  That was the one thing the irate person would reveal.
Don't assume she said what she actually meant--people screw up words and statements and such, all the more when they're upset.
 
It is a porn star's name (and apparently a female name, if not a very popular one), but I'm not coming up with anything as an acronym.

Quote from: robcat2075 on Yesterday at 08:06 AMBut would that have been too obscene to explain to me in the privacy of the principal's office?
It would have been entirely reasonable for you do expect her to explain it rather than expecting you to act entirely on her say so. Period. Frankly any half decent administrator would have probably beat you to that punch and taken responsibility for a more equitable and useful discussion of the matter.

Quote from: altobone64 on Yesterday at 08:29 AMCareer teacher here. The principal handled the situation incompetently.

Ya know... to this day, I have no idea what a principal does.   

I worked at a high school and Jr high that had principals but... other than being a middleman for someone else's complaint about me I never detected that they were engaged in any productive activity. 

Their secretaries seemed to be working.  They were the ones who gave me the forms and lists and schedules I needed and knew who to call about what, but the principals?  I'm stumped. 

What was the maths teacher's name? Could it have been a students' acronym shorthand for something unkind about her? If it was Theresa Elliott (say), that might fit...

What was the maths teacher's name? Could it have been a students' acronym shorthand for something unkind about her? If it was Theresa Elliott (say), that might fit...