Karen

Karen (pronounced kar-uhn (kahr-ren or kuh-ren for the given name))

(1) A group of people of eastern and southern Burma (Myanmar).

(2) One of these people.

(3) The language of the Karen, a Tibeto-Burman language of the Sino-Tibetan family.

(4) Of or relating to the Karen people or their language.

(5) A female given name, originally a form of Katherine.

(6) A general purpose pejorative term used to disparage white, middle-class, middle-aged women.

1759: The original spelling was Carian, from the Burmese ka-reng (wild, dirty, low-caste man), a not entirely affectionate local descriptor of the Mongoloid people of Burma.  For the ethnic group, the noun plural is Karens, (especially collectively) or Karen; for all other uses it’s Karens. 

1800s: The feminine proper name entered English from the Danish Karen, a vernacular form of Catherine & Katherine that arose in medieval Denmark.  Rare in the English-speaking world before 1928, it first became popular during the 1940s and was consistently in the top-ten for girls born in the United States between 1951-1968, and was the third most popular girl's name in 1965.  That proved to be peak-Karen and its use rapidly declined to be negligible.  Used in the Danish, Arabic, Dutch, Hebrew, Norwegian, German and English languages, variants (mostly German, Austrian & the Nordic countries) include Caja, Kaja (Danish), Caren, Caryn, Karena, Kaat, Karin, Karyn (and dozens of others), it has since 1945 also been used in Japan, China, Malaya (later Malaysia) and the Philippines.

Karen can also be a family name (surname).  In Armenian, Karen (Կարեն) (kɑˈɾɛn) is a common masculine given name, derived from the Parthian name of the House of Karen (or Caren) which ruled the Tabaristan region, corresponding (approximately) to the provinces of Gilan and Mazandaran.  The House of Karen (Kārēn in the Middle Persian; Kārēn in the Parthian & Persian (کارن‎), Kārin or Kāren, known also as Karen-Pahlav (Kārēn-Pahlaw)) was one of the seven great houses during the rule of the Parthian and Sassanian Empires.  The masculine given name Garen is a western Armenian form of the eastern Armenian Karen.

One spelling used in both Germany and the Nordic countries is Carin.  The Swedish-born Countess Carin von Kantzow (1888-1931) was the first wife of Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) and the palatial country house (construction of which was paid for by the state) he had built during the 1930s was “Carinhall” in her memory.  Carinhall sat in the grounds of his large hunting estate (another gift from the state) in the Schorfheide Forest, north-east of Berlin and was the site of many events in which he showed off his varied tastes in clothing (including Roman togas and painted toenails) and sybaritic lifestyle.  What went on at Carinhall was the subject of much gossipy humor in political & diplomatic circles and the more austere Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) once suggested to a visitor: “You should visit Göring at Carinhall, a sight worth seeing.”.  He later had a much smaller lodge built after marrying his second wife (Emma “Emmy” Sonnemann (1893–1973)); that he named “Emmyhall”.  In 1945, as the Red Army approached, Göring had Carinhall destroyed with explosives and only a few ruins now remain.

Hitler and Göring at Carinhall. The reaction of more conventional types to Göring’s appearance and behaviour was captured by an entry in the memorable diary of Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903–1944; Italian foreign minister 1936-1944 (and the son-in-law of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943)).  The occasion was the Reichsmarschall’s visit to Rome early in 1942, seeking Italian reinforcements for the faltering campaign in Russia:

“As usual he is bloated and overbearing.  We had dinner at the Excelsior Hotel, and during the dinner Goering talked of little else but the jewels he owned. In fact, he had some beautiful rings on his fingers.  On the way to the station he wore a great sable coat, something between what automobile drivers wore in 1906 and what a high-grade prostitute wears to the opera.”

Beware of the edgy bob

Karen is a pejorative term used in the English-speaking world to disparage white, middle-class, middle-aged women on the basis of their sense of entitlement and demanding behavior.  It’s thus a particular critique of white privilege and is especially associated with a certain bob cut hairstyle, now known in the industry as the speak to the manager.  The origins are murky and the Karen in its now understood term is really a coalesced form from a number of threads to define characteristics like "entitlement, selfishness, a desire to complain" with stereotypical behavior being demanding to “speak to the manager”, usually about some trivial matter.  A creation of social media, the evolution from its point of critical-mass has (presumably coincidently) run in parallel with COVID-19; in November 2019, Google reported fewer than 20,000 instances of use which, by July 2020 had increased to over eight million.  It has origins in the mid-2010s as a way for people of color, particularly African-Americans, to satirise the class-based and racially charged hostilities and micro-aggressions they often face and in that it was different from the BLM (black lives matter) movement in that it focused not on violence but on instances of casual-racism, always by women perceived to be of a certain age and class.  Earlier instances were tied to specific events captured on the suddenly ubiquitous smartphones, yielding the predictably alliterative Permit Patty, BBQ Becky and Golfcart Gail but, in 2018, the trend distilled into Karen, an apparently quintessentially white name.

Except in Scandinavia, Karens are dying out.

Quite how "Karen" should be classified attracted feminist deconstruction. Although used exclusively in a pejorative manner toward a person of a specific race and gender, the subject, although female, is not one historically associated with discrimination in this context and thus the critical descriptive tools really didn’t exist.  The conclusion seemed to be this was just another way to silence women, denying them a right to speak.  The more radical feminist left, attracted more to intersectionality, suggested it was "sexist, ageist, and classist”, although, despite being deployed only against white women, it couldn’t, as a matter of law in most Western jurisdictions, be thought racist as such although, because the targets of many Karens were depicted as minorities, it did fit into the general rubric of the critique of white privilege.  Use seems to have peaked in 2020 but "a Karen" is still often heard.