African-American Names: History and Tradition

Consider LaKeisha.

LaKeisha is a quintessential African-American name, one well-used by African-American parents for their children, but by virtually no one else, not white Americans, not Africans, not Europeans. It doesn't exist in any conventional naming dictionary, and many people, including many name experts, believe it is made up. "Created," decrees one popular name book. Another incorrectly declares it a combination of "the popular La prefix" with Aisha, the name of Muhammad's favorite wife and one that's often used, in many variations, by African-American parents.

But most name books simply disregard LaKeisha, along with the entire subject of African-American names, as well as the thousands of names favored by African-Americans. Why? Ignorance plays a major role in the issue, with everyone from name scholars to African-American parents — and of course, most especially the general public — largely unaware of the history and traditions of African-American names. Not much has been written on the subject, and research has been spotty, confined to slave names, for instance, or modern African-American naming practices, but rarely considering the entire sweep of African-American naming history.

Thus, the misunderstanding of LaKeisha, a name that embodies many of the primary influences that have shaped African-American names over the centuries.

Take that "La" at the beginning. Hundreds of African-American names, male as well as female ones, start with "La," a practice that can be traced back to the vigorous Free Black community in nineteenth century Louisiana, where the French "La"-prefix was affixed to many names, first as well as last.

Keisha derives no from Aisha but from Keziah, a Biblical name. Keziah was one of the daughters of Job — Jemima was another one — whose name was popular among slaves who adopted Christianity and favored Old Testament names. Although Puritans used the name Keziah, it was not widely used by southern whites which made it fair game for blacks.

This is key: The black naming tradition has always, in America, been separate from the white one, distinct in its references and choices. It is a tradition influenced by Africa, influenced by Europe and American whites, more recently influenced by the Muslim culture. But it is, most dramatically, a tradition unto itself, uniquely African-American.

At the core of the African-American naming culture are variety and invention. You can see that in LaKeisha: It takes something from here, something from there, shakes the spelling up a bit, to arrive at a name that's new and special.

This diversity can be traced to the first Africans to arrive as slaves in America in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. They arrived with African names but were instantly renamed by their new white masters. The first generation of African-American infants also tended to be named by their slave owners. White endeavored to give each of their slaves a unique name, one borne by no other slave on the plantation, in order to simplify work assignments and provision distribution. And they also looked for names that were not, by and large, used by the white community.

Some of the favorites of these early times were names from Greek and Roman myths. Southern plantation owners admired those ancient societies, and fancied their own as being similar. Before 1800, classical names accounted for 20 percent of those given to slaves. While these are certainly noble names relating to heroic characters, the attitude of the slaveowners in bestowing them, according to one scholar, may have been "whimsical, satiric or condescending in intent." Some of the most widely used classical names:

Female

Cleopatra
Daphne
Diana
Dido
Flora
Juno
Minerva
Phoebe
Sappho
Thisbe
Venus

Male

Adonis
Augustus
Bacchus
Caesar
Cato
Cicero
Cupid
Hannibal
Hector
Hercules
Jupiter
Nero
Pompey
Primus
Scipio
Titus
Virgil

Because the slaveowners needed a large pool of names, they allowed the continuation of some African names and naming practices, even though many accounts suggest they tended to be threatened by African names and traditions. In Colonial times, as many as 15 to 20 percent of slaves in the two Carolinas bore African names, most notably day names, which relate to the day of the week on which the person is born. Prior to 1750, according to the scholar John Inscoe, 14% of African-American babies were given pure African names at birth and 25% were given names influenced by African names. The West African day names were:

	Female	Male
Sunday	Quasheba	Quashee
Monday	Juba	Cudjoe
Tuesday	Beneba	Cubbenah
Wednesday	Cuba	Quaco
Thursday	Abba	Quao
Friday	Phebe/Phibbi	Cuff/Cuffee
Saturday	Mimba	Quame/Kwame

Some of these names were changed to English cognates: Cudjoe to Joe, Quaco to Jack, Juba to Judy, Abba to Abby, Phebe to Phoebe. And then the entire day-naming tradition was traslated into English, by slaveowners and slaves alike. Names were chosen that signified days of the weeks, months of the year, and special holidays. Some Anglicized day names that were used, primarily for boys but for girls as well, include Monday, Friday, Christmas, Easter, March, and July.

Place names were also commonly used in early days for slaves, often signifying a place of importance to the slaveowner but sometimes relating to a place meaningful to the African-American parents. Sometimes, in keeping with the African tradition of using an event of the day of the child's birth to inform the name choice, the place an important ship arrived from might dictate the name. Between 1720 and 1740, as many as one in four male slaves were given place names. The only place names noted for females were Carolina, Angola, and Cuba. The male choices from that time include:

Aberdeen
Africa
Albemarle
America
Baltimore
Barbary
Boston
Carolina
Congo
Currituck
Dublin
Glasgow
London
Norfolk
Richmond
Williamsburg
Windsor
York

Most avante-garde, to our 21st cetury ears, were the word names used for and by African-Americans, signifying everything from virtues à la the Puritan naming tradition to the weather. The use of these kinds of names relate to the African belief in the power of a name to shape personality or influence fate or impart a desirable quality. Some virtue and word names that have been recorded among early African-Americans are:

Female

Charity
Diamond
Earth/Eartha
Honor
Hope
Jewel
Love
Mourning
Obedience
Patience
Providence
Queen
Temperance

Male

California Gold
Duke
Forlorn
Goodluck
Hardtimes
Justice
King
Lowlife
Major
Misery
Plenty
Prince
Squire
Suffer
Vice

Either

Chance
Fortune
Freeze
Liberty
Pleasant
Rainy
Starry
Stormy

After 1800, two things changed that significantly altered African-American naming patterns. Once was that many slaves had been in the U.S. for a generation or two, and began naming their own children, often using kin names. This served to shrink the pool of names used as well as to reinforce family ties among African-Americans. Interestingly, blacks tended to name babies after grandparents, an African tradition and also a way to extend a family's roots back to African forebears, while whites of the same tended to name after parents first. Grandparents sometimes chose an infant's name, another African custom.

The other major nineteenth century change was the conversion of many blacks to Christianity, and their subsequent adoption of Biblical names. For males, the use of Biblical names doubled from 1720 to 1820, from 20 to 40 percent. Popular choices for both sexes included:

Female

Delilah
Dorcas
Esther
Hagar
Hannah
Jemima
Keziah
Leah
Rachel
Rebekah
Rhoda
Tamar
Zilpah

Male

Abel
Cain
Elijah
Ephraim
Ezekiel
Hezekiah
Isaac
Isaiah
Ishmael
Lazarus
Moses
Noah
Samson
Shadrach
Solomon
Zachariah

This move towards Biblical names meant that blacks and whites shared the same names more often than ever before, although African-American choices still tended to diverge from white ones. The use of the older "slave names" — the day names, place names, classical names — declined as Biblical names rose to the fore, and when they were used it was as a kin name. After 1865, blacks often dropped names too closely identified with slavery, Pericles becoming Perry, Willie formalizing his name to William.

By the early part of the twentieth century, black and white names in America were as related as they would ever be. There were some similarities as well as some differences in popularity lists, but most significantly, roughly the same proportion of black and white children received one of the top names. During this period, in other words, African-Americans stayed as close to convention and chose from as narrow a selection of names as whites did.

Still, there were variations. A detailed survey of the most popular names given to black females in Augusta, Georgia in 1937, shows many overlaps with the white popularity list of that time, but with more informal and familiar forms — Lillie instead of Lillian, for example, and Janie not Jane. These short forms reflect the black's subordinate position in society, according to more than one expert:

Mary
Annie
Mattie
Carrie
Rosa
Lillie
Emma
Mamie
Hattie
Sarah
Fanny
Louise
Elizabeth
Ella
Julia
Lula
Lizzie
Marie
Susie
Alice
Janie

Black and white naming patterns began to widely diverge during the 1960s with the rise of Black Nationalism and ethnic identity. While for decades black parents had been more likely than whites to choose unique names for their children, in the sixties everyone's taste for individual names rose — but African-American parents' desire for one-of-a-kind names increased more. During this period black parents began looking to Muslim and African names for their children, but also taking the roots of those native names and making them their own. But perhaps more significantly, for names if not for black culture, this is when the enormous trend toward invention began.

From 1973 to 1985 in New York, 31% of black girls and 19% of black boys were given unique names — names that were not used for any other child of their sex and race in that state and that year — according to data collected by Stanley Lieberson, a sociology professor at Harvard. Similarly, in 1989 in Illinois, 29% of African-American girls and 16% of boys received unique names, according to another study by Lieberson. Although no newer data have been published, our guess is that those numbers have only increased with time.

For whites, the tendency to choose unique names drops off as the child's mother education rises, according to Lieberson. But for blacks, mother's education does not affect the chances that she'll choose an individual name for her child. African-American mothers of different education levels, says Lieberson, tend to choose names more like each other than do white mothers of the same education level. "Race," says Lieberson, "is a more powerful influence than class on the naming of children." The race effect is strongest on girls' names: roughly twice as significant as on boys' names, which tend to overlap more in popularity.

From The Last Word on First Names and Beyond Jennifer and Jason, Madison and Montana by Pamela Redmond Satran and Linda Rosenkrantz.

Citation:

"African-American Names: History and Tradition." Parenting.com - The Baby Namer. http://www.parenting.com/parenting/tools/babynamer/article_african.html. Accessed 1 April 2003.

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African-American Names: History and Tradition