I've been interested in personal name origins and meanings for some time. Since the late 1960s there has been an increase among African Americans in the number of "different" personal names and "regular" names that are spelled differently. I believe that non-African Americans also have given non-traditional names to their children, but it seems that it is not to the same degree as African Americans. I believe that there are shared reasons and different reasons among Americans for this practice of giving children "different" names.

IMO, foremost among the shared reasons is creativity. Adapting already existing names and 'making up' names is a form of creativity that is accessible to everyone.

Many Americans regardless of race and ethnicity want names that are unique but not too unique. In cultures where the syllables of a name mean specific things, changing the name's spelling would completely change the name's meaning. But in cultures like the United States where the sound of a name is of utmost important, people can play with a name's spellings, including capitolization and/or add prefixes, suffixes, accent marks, and/or hypens to a name to enhance the name's uniqueness.

Let me give you an example from African American culture: the male [and increasingly female] name "Shawn" which is an Irish form of the Hebrew name "John". This name has been spelled many different ways and has had prefixes and/or suffixes added to enhance its sound and look. For example "Shon" "Shaun", "DeShawn", "Deshon" ,
Te-haun, "Shondre", "LeShon" and "LaShondra" to name just a few contemporary personal names. These names would usually be considered "African American" names. "Shon & "Shaun" could be male or female. "DeShawn" & "Deshon" [DAY shaun] are male names that are quite popular among African Americans since 1980s [nickname "Day Day"]; "Te-Shaun" {Tay-shon} probably owes its inspiration to "Deshawn". "Shondre" is probably a male name {Dre is a popular [usually African American nickname for Andre which has a also host of different spellings]; "LeShon" and "LaShondra" are probably female names. As you can see there are gender preferences for contemporary names, for instance-"De"=male; "La"=female. I'm unsure if these gender preferences are shared by non-African Americans.

I've also found that African Americans have sound preferences. For females and males the "sha" "cha" prefix is very very popular ["Shawn", "Chante [pronounced "SHANtay"]"Shanika"}". And for females the "a" ending ["ah"] sound is very popular.

One major difference between African American and non-African American personal names is the use of Arabic and traditional African names. In late 1960s, as a result of the rise in Black pride [due in large part to African nations becoming independent of European countries], a significant number of African Americans changed their names to Arabic and [to a much lesser degree] traditional African personal names. A lot of times African Americans who have Arabic names will say that these names are African [and since Islam was in West Africa since the 11 century AD, in a sense those names are African. However, in my opinion, African Americans gravitated to Arabic names because those names were and still are] more widely known than traditional African names. Also Arabic names more closely conform to African American sound preferences than some traditional African names [particularly those with more than three syllables and those which have unfamiliar consonate clusters such as "dj".

And since African Americans aren't prohibited by religion and custom and the meanings of the name prefix, suffix etc, we also readily change the spellings of some of these names. Take for example the Arabic male name "Jabar" ["Jabbar"] which means "the compeller". The KiSwahili [East/parts of Central Africa] form of this name is "Jabari" {in the USA if not in Africa it is pronounced jah-BAR-ee] and said to mean "brave". For a contemporary form of that name see the name "Jabbor". This was the first name of the 18 year old African American who took the initiative to take an abandoned New Orlean's school bus, fill it with 100 or so strangers and drive them out of that city's devastation to safety in Houston. I believe his last name was Gibson.

I could go on and on. But I won't :O)

A couple of years ago I started this website AlafiaNames on names used by African Americans. The website includes a database of names from Hebrew, English, Arabic, Irish, French etc sources. However, I regret to say that I've turned my attention to other projects and haven't added names to that database for some time.

"Alafia" is a Yoruba {Nigeria,West Africa} greeting word and the name of my non-profit organization.

AlafiaNames also has some name quizzes and information on the surnames.

Enjoy!


Azizi