Dazbo,

I appreciate you sharing that information about
Daz" I didn't know that.

Sharing cultural information through the Internet is great!

As to why African Americans make up names, I believe this is part and parcel of our love of creating, and improvisation {taking a song and changing it up; adding our own "flavor" to make it more uniquely ours.

Some people might point to the practice of slave masters or slave mistresses naming their slaves. However, from what I've read, that was not always done-meaning that in many instances enslaved African Americans could either name their offspring without any interferance from their "owners", or they could reject the name given, or they could and often did use another name for the child in the privacy of their own home. But the practice of selecting names for African American children different from the standard and then popular European names has much more to do with remembrances of African naming practice + creativity.

IMO, African American naming practices have nothing at all to do with humor or joy of life -well maybe joy of life, but not humor. Some people might think these names or their spellings are funny but we don't.

As to racism- well that's more complicated. In the late 1960s African Americans {and later other Black people in the Caribbean and elsewhere ??} started replacing our 'slave' first name [birth name that was probaby of European language or Hebrew language] for a 'free name" that was usually Arabic or KiSwahili and less often from other traditional African languages such as Akan {Ghana, West Africa}names like "Kwame" and "Kofi" for example}.

IMO, this was more an affirmation of Black heritage,than an expression of racism.

That's how I got my name "Azizi". I've used it for more thatn 30 years now and hardly anyone [but my birth family] calls me .......

;O)