Guest Tom,

"Thomas" and its nickname, "Tom" have long been relatively common personal names for Americans [including African Americans]. Because it is [or has been] such a common name, "Tom" isn't always considered as having that "Uncle Tom" negative connotation.

It's been my understanding that "Thomas" is Greek and means "a twin" while "Sean" is an Irish form of the Hebrew name "John" [Yehokhanan}which means "God is gracious. or "gracious gift of God"

Does "Tom" and "Seanin" mean the same thing in Iceland?

BTW, I'd love to learn more about the naming practices, music and other customs of Iceland. I think that would make a great thread.

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Tom, I don't know which African American school of higher learning you might be referring to, but see this excerpt for information about the history of Historical Black Colleges:

"There are more than 100 historically Black colleges and universities in the United States today. These institutions of higher learning, whose principal mission is to educate African Americans, have evolved since their beginning in 1837 when their primary responsibility was to educate freed slaves to read and write. At the dawn of the 21st century, along with graduate and post-graduate degrees, historically Black colleges and universities offer African American students a place to earn a sense of identity, heritage and community.

Segregation Era
Before the Civil War (1861-1865) the majority of Blacks in the United States were enslaved. Although a few free Blacks attended primarily White colleges in the North in the years before the war, such opportunities were very rare and nonexistent in the slave states of the South. In response to the lack of opportunity, a few institutions of secondary and higher education for Blacks were organized in the antebellum years. Cheyney University in Pennsylvania, founded in 1837 as the Institute for Colored Youth, has the earliest founding date of an HBCU, although for most of its early history it offered only elementary and high school level instruction. The first great expansion in Black higher education came after the war, however, during the widening opportunities of Reconstruction (1865-1877).

Private Institutions
The years between the Civil War and World War I (1914-1918) were an era of tremendous growth for American colleges and universities. Higher education spread primarily through institutions financed by public taxes, particularly the rapidly expanding land-grant colleges established by U.S. Congress in the Morrill Act of 1862. These land-grant institutions, coupled with a growing system of state colleges, marked the emergence of a distinctive style of American higher education: publicly supported institutions of higher learning serving a broad range of students as well as the cultural, economic, and political interests of various local and state constituencies."

-snip-

MORE HERE

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Thanks for the question.

Positive vibrations,

Azizi