Posted on 09/15/2014 3:34:00 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
They ought to bring back the traditional names: John, Charles, George, Edward and James for boys and Lisa, Linda, Edna, Nannette and Ann for girls.
It’s not. Strangely enough, real Africans, both in African countries and here, often have just regular names. For instance the President of Liberia? Her name is Ellen.....
When I was in college, there were some engineering students from Nigeria who did not look kindly upon the urban black “culture” in Newark NJ. If anything they were more British than the British.
The black students’ names I read off of the attendance roster in high school are almost without exception NOT names like Katherine, Priscilla, Susan, etc. They are LaShanda, Quaneesha, Imani, Taneesha, Quateesha, Daniece, etc. I have always thought that the newly-delivered mother must have looked out the window for inspiration, like reading what was written on the side of a delivery truck and deciding what a cool name it would be for the baby. It seems so long as there’s a Qu- in there somewhere, -sha or -ee- and it ends in an “a”, it’s OK. They don’t seem to have any correlation to actual “African” names coming from Africa.
Another possible explanation...
``Concurrently, overworked interns on rotation in ghetto hospitals
did what they could to entertain themselves amid 20-hour days in
depressing surroundings. In 1963, as in all other years, one of the
standard gambits among interns assigned to inner-city delivery rooms
was to see who could cause the most outrageous name to be printed
on the birth certificate of children born to ghetto teenagers.’’
— John Ross in `Unintended Consequences’
A friend who teaches in a midwestern school told me thay had a student who was named (sounds like) shi’-THAY-ad and (spelled) `Shithead’ This is not a person who normally pulls my leg so I’m inclined to believe it... Maybe I’m gullible?
That was a great skit.
In the 19th century Biblical names were very common, then went out of fashion. The idea of a farmer being a "rube" probably arose from people thinking that Reuben was a typical farmer's name.
Louis Adamic, an immigrant from Slovenia, wrote a lot on immigrant-related topics. I read something by him where he talks about a man in Pennsylvania with a typical Polish name who couldn't get hired as a teacher despite being well qualified, until he changed his last name to Sullivan. That would have been probably in the 1920s or 1930s.
And the name to which John Ross was referring was pronounced
Gah NOR ee ah.
Another one was the skit with Nicolas Cage (IIRC),
whose name was “Ozz Wee Pay” (asswipe)
My favorite made-up black name for a female is Loquacia. Good for the ones you hear blabbing incomprehensible jibberish non-stop with their looter friends outside the Quik Trip.
Related:
log·or·rhe·a
I knew several Aubrey’s growing up. I guess their parents liked the group Bread.
Try applying for a job with a Boston law firm or NPR when your name is listed as:
"Bubba"
"Billy Joe"
"Charlene"
"Sally Mae"
Believe me, it is. I’ve had a lot of black students named Jayden. Mostly boys. I did have one white girl named Jayden.
Something that the article didn't touch on was apostrophes. Nothing indicates a black person more than an apostrophe in the first name.
Calling “Clarence” a “black” name is really rather surprising since king Edward IV of England was the Duke of Clarence before he became king. That makes it historically far more of an English name than a “black” one.
“I gave him like a traditional African name: O.J..” - Bruno
After Guns and Roses hit it big the name Axel went from not being among the top 1000 names for boys to being in the top 200 now.
That is hilarious. Obamaniqua is my personal favorite.
There’s one of those for top white girl names just as funny.
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