Your analogy doesn’t fit.
My grandmother was born a Canadian Methodist in 1906, Ontario. She was raised Christian by her parents, lived a Christian life and died a Christian at the age of 91.
Her mother named her Leila, a common Arabic name.
Her mother had no ties to the Arabic world, but liked the sound of the name.
There are children on my street that have Arabic names, and yet they go to Christian churches and have no contact with the Arabic world.
In America, people are commonly given names that do not fit with their nationality, their religion or their culture. Many black families name their children these Arabic names without realizing any connection between a name and a Middle Eastern culture. They use these names and believe that they are part of an African-American culture.
Obama did not name himself. His parents did. But, in using his given name is not dishonoring anyone. If he didn’t use his given name many would say, “What his he trying to hide! We know what his first name truly is!” He is using the name given to him by birth, a decision he had no say in.
You are trying to divine the meaning of his given name. Do you know what his mother’s thoughts were when she named him that name? Tell me if you can why he named one of his daughters Natasha. When he did so, was he honoring a Russian culture?
I gave my daughter a French name, and it was the first name of a significant teacher in my life. This teacher’s first name was Andrea and she was Jewish with Russian ancestry. Our family is neither French, Russian or Jewish. There is no cultural significance in the giving of this name. There is only the significance that my husband and I liked the name and I remember my teacher fondly when I smile at my daughter.
Sometimes a name is just a name.
Yeah, and after five generations it's a tradition.
Documentation of his actual ethnic background demonstrates Mr. Obama is not an “African-American” as defined in United States law. This research was initiated by a request from a daily news publication of international reputation in New York City.
The story then moves to documenting his father’s genealogy. This study indicates Sen. Obama is actually Arab-American. The significance of this is that “the soul and substance of Mr. Obama’s claim to fame” rest entirely on his being “the first” African-American to achieve whatever it is that Mr. Obama is claiming at the time. If Mr. Obama is not legally an African-American, then his claims collapse. While there may still be historic firsts, for example, being the first Arab-American to be the president of the Harvard Law Review, those claims are not the star-appeal of his entire political life, and the basis of his current celebrity star status. If he is not African-American, then he is not what has propelled him up the political ladder; he is not, as described by one journalist riding Mr. Obama’s campaign plane, what is currently capturing America’s “cult” attention.