Michael Eric Dyson (16 page)

But the bulk of ex-slaves chose Anglo-American surnames, underscoring their deep Americanization. The same can be said for those free blacks in the Upper South who took the surnames of their former masters—sometimes out of “gratitude and respect,” as one ex-slave put it, but also because, as he admitted, identifying with an established family would
help him in his efforts as a tradesman.
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Many other ex-slaves followed suit. In the first flush of freedom, black surnames were drawn not only from Anglo-American culture and from former owners, but from notable personages associated with independence and freedom, like Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Grant and Hamilton, and from biblical names like Isaiah, Moses, Joshua and Ezekiel. Other free blacks adopted certain surnames because of their emotional or cultural appeal, or because they “simply liked the way they sounded, or found them unique.”
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Unusual or unique names—those names “given to no other child born in that year who is of the same sex and race”—have consistently, if not overwhelmingly, appeared in African American culture.
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Among black college students in 1938, 15.3 percent of black females and 8.4 percent of black males had unusual names. The proportion of unusual names for these students varied according to the region of the country they lived in: In Ohio, it was 9.9 percent; in the Upper South, it was 10.4 percent; in the Lower South, it was 13.9 percent; and in Oklahoma and Texas, it was 16.3 percent, numbers that paralleled those for whites with unusual names.
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Some blacks, however, did give their children “highly fantastic” names. In Rockingham County, North Carolina, in 1930, blacks had names like Agenora, Audrivalus, Earvila, Eldeese, Katel, Limmer, Margorilla, Roanza and Venton Orlaydo.
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Some unusual black names were “African survivals,” while other names, especially those given by Gullahs on the South Carolina and Georgia coastlines, followed African patterns of
naming children after circumstances of birth, the mood of the parents, or with the intent of bringing their children good fortune.
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Gullah children had names like Blossom, Wind, Hail, Storm, Freeze, Morning and Cotton, all reflecting birth circumstances—for instance, Blossom might have been born when flowers were blooming and Cotton was born during cotton-picking time.
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Black children had names like Pleasant Times and Hard Times, reflecting their parents’ mood at the time of their birth. Religious belief and the desire to bless their children led to names like Fortune, Redemption, Refuge and Precious Allgood; sacred and secular phrases resulted in names such as I Will Arise, Try and See, and Daisy Bell Rise Up.
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Some Gullah children were named after West African nicknames and after totems or clan names such as Frog, Bear, Cat-Fish and Squirrel.

For the most part, however, unusual black names were African only in the sense that they reflected flair and creativity, not because they had direct links to African culture.
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Those African traits showed through when black folk named their children after brands and consumer products, such as Hershey Bar, Listerine and Creamola. Unusual black names became more prominent in the first half of the twentieth century, but were curtailed in the 1950s, perhaps because of the rise of the modern civil rights movement and the focus in certain quarters on assimilation to white life.
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The adoption of African names became popular with the dissatisfaction, after the height of the civil rights struggle, with persistent inequality. The trend was aided as well by the rise of black power ideology and black nationalist sentiment in the late sixties and
early seventies, with its strong emphasis on black pride, a distinctive black culture and identification with Africa.
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Prominent black figures, as well as thousands of other blacks, adopted African names: SNCC leader and black freedom fighter Stokely Carmichael became Kwame Toure; writer and activist Leroi Jones became Amiri Baraka; and activist and Kwanzaa founder Ron Karenga took on the first name Maulana. There followed a slew of infant females named Aina, Jamilah, Khadija and Shani, and a host of boys named Hasani, Hakeem, Jabari, Kofi, Quaashie and Sulaiman. The volume
Names from Africa
, put out in 1972 by Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of
Ebony
and
Jet
magazines, became one of its best-selling books.
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These developments may even account in part for the resurgence of unusual black names since the 1980s.

In the last twenty years, a number of black parents have continued to give their children unique names. In a study of unique African American names in Illinois conducted by Harvard sociologist Stanley Lieberson and then-graduate student Kelly S. Mikelson, for example, 29 percent of black girls and 16 percent of black boys had unique names in 1989.
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At times, the uniqueness of their names had to do with the unusual spelling variation of a common name; a “standard” name that was no longer popular; or, in the majority of cases, because their names were invented or adapted from existing words, usually nouns, that were not usually used as first names, such as geographical names, surnames, or commercial products.
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In Illinois, there was a huge jump in the early sixties in unique names for black girls, and while the percentages
were lower for black boys, they followed the same pattern. Among white children during the comparable period, there weren’t nearly as many unique names given.
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While unique black names seem to radically depart from “standard” (African) American names, it seems that these names fulfill the same function provided by first names in at least sixty societies: the indication of the name-holder’s sex.
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In the Illinois study, 224 subjects (122 of them were white, 61 were black and 41 were either “other” or indicated no race) were presented with a list of sixteen unique black names. There was a high degree of consensus about which names were male and which were female, and the majority guesses were usually correct.
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Since both blacks and whites had an equal ability to guess the gender of the names, it was clear to Lieberson and Mikelson that there “is a widely shared cultural agreement regarding the sounds associated with names for girls and boys.”
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Furthermore, there appear to be linguistic features that influence black parents’ selections of invented names. For example, there is the gender cue that
a
endings, such as Lamecca, Timitra, Maleka and Sukoya, are usually female.
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(Joshua is the only male name among blacks’ and whites’ top one hundred names that ends with an
a
.) Next, similarity to an Arabic male name—in concert with the fact that a large degree of black, and white, male names end in consonants—usually indicates a unique male name like Husan.
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Then there is the gender cue provided by the
Sh
(
Ch
often has the
Sh
sound, as in Charlene) that starts many black female names. (In fact, there are four leading names for black females that begin with
Sh:
Sharon, Shamika, Sheri and
Sheena, and three that begin with
Ch:
Chantel, Charlene and Chanel.)
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Even among black unique names, the
Sh
sound (even when it is made by
Ch
) holds true as a likely index of female gender. (This is only likely, since there are black males with the
Sh
sound at the beginning of their names, for instance, actor Shemar Moore.) Also, for boys with unique black names, it is slightly more likely their names will end in
i
or
ie
than for girls. And it is also much more likely that names ending in a hard
d
, such as Olukayod, are male rather than female. All in all, black parents who give their children invented, unique names appear to be guided by the rules that they be gender specific and that certain sounds are appropriate for either gender.
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There appears to be culture in phonemes.

Of course, prejudice against unique names may not stop when folk learn that there are rules that shape their invention, or that naming in general has a long and complicated history in black America. Many blacks, especially those who are middle class or wealthier, feel just as Cosby does. Journalist Cathy Jackson is upset when black parents give their children distinctive names because, unlike in the case of Africans, or of Muslim groups, these names don’t make any sense. “What is the meaning of Zohnitha, Equilla, Lakeisha, Neumoonisha, La Domona, De Andrean or Zanquisha?” Jackson asks.
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Of course most folk, including blacks who give their children conventional names, may not pass that litmus test of naming: I’m not sure my mother knew the meaning of Michael when she gave me that name. For that matter, I’m not sure she realized that Eric, my middle name, was invented
centuries ago by folk who believed the world was flat, though the meaning of that name has since changed.
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Jackson argues that these names “surely aren’t inherited from our African-American ancestors.” But, as we learned above, the patterns are the same as those adopted by earlier generations of black folk, Africans and African Americans alike, who were creative in their selections, adaptations and inventions.

Jackson is on to more serious territory when she warns of studies that show behavior problems “occur much more frequently among people who have peculiar names,” and that another study found that “criminal misdeeds are four times as frequent among those with unusual names.”
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For a moment it appears as if Cosby’s disgust with unique black names may be justified, especially his aside that those with such names “are all in jail.” But then, when we recall that some of the worst crimes in history have been committed by folk with perfectly normal names like Charles Manson or Ted Bundy, there’s a bit of relief. Moreover, many of the white supremacists who committed untold atrocities against black folk in the South had regular names like Sam and Billy, and segregationist politicians who justified those heinous acts as occupants of the highest office in states like Alabama and Georgia had old-fashioned names like George Wallace and Lester Maddox. To be sure, Pookie might steal your car, which is bad enough, but he isn’t likely to participate in acts of racial genocide.

In fact, there might be a more reasonable causal explanation to correlate blacks with unique names and behavioral problems and criminal activity: They usually come from at-risk families and neighborhoods. As Jackson says, “it is mostly poor, very
young Black mothers who give their children fanciful names,” though she admits she knows upwardly mobile black people have also “saddled their offspring with names that have lots of rhythm but no reason.”
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But then, as we learned above, there are plenty of reasons for how and why black folk choose the names they do, and there are rules that govern even totally made up names. If it is true that mostly working-class and poor black folk give their children unique names, then it is likely that if they gave their children conventional “white” names—say, Richard or Alan or William—it wouldn’t make much difference at all in their economic standing.

Even though Jackson claims that she is concerned about the social costs a “burdensome title” imposes on black kids—ridicule at school, names their grandparents can’t pronounce, psychological harm—the ultimate explanation for her response to black names may be the same sort of embarrassment before white folk that chagrined earlier generations of the black middle class and elites, and that seems to plague Cosby as well. Trying to explain to one’s white colleagues or peers or fellow citizens the raison d’être of some black names brings winces of shame to many black faces. Fortunately, when some black folk find humor or even shock in unique black names—after all, naming one’s children Versace, Formica, Moet, Lexus and Toyota, as some black parents have done, may seem a frightening new invention, but, as we discovered earlier, black folk for a long time have turned to famous brands and consumer products for names—they have neither guilt nor embarrassment about the choices poorer and younger black folk make. Instead, they have awareness that a
persistently racist society imposes social and racial tariffs on poor blacks, and psychological ones on the more well-to-do blacks among us.
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There should be little surprise, then, with the findings of a 2003 study conducted by economists Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan that concluded that employers often discriminate against black job applicants by screening resumes based on applicants’ potential race as suggested by their names.
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The pair crafted resumes with white-sounding and black-sounding names and sent nearly 5,000 of them to 1,300 jobs that were advertised in Chicago and Boston newspapers. Those “applicants” with white-sounding names such as Jay, Brad, Carrie, Kristen, Laurie and Sarah were 50 percent more likely to receive a callback than those with black-sounding names like Ebony, Latonya, Kenya, Latoya, Rasheed and Kareem.

When Bertrand and Mullainathan were designing their study, colleagues predicted that there would indeed be a discrimination effect revealed, but one that pointed to “reverse discrimination,” under the assumption, it seems, that affirmative action policies would benefit the resumes of apparently black applicants.
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But the reverse proved to be true; the racial disparity in callbacks substantiates the existence of persistent discrimination in the workplace. This discrimination affected blacks seeking employment in a wide range of positions as executives and managers, administrative supervisors, sales representatives, sales workers in retail finance and insurance and personal services, clerical workers, administrative support, manufacturing, transportation and communications,
wholesale and retail trade, insurance and real estate finance, business and personal services, and health, educational and social services.
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