June 18, 2003 at 12:00 am #36081
Johnny29348
Participant
I can’t judge whether African Americans would be insulted, but it might help you to know that the names you’ve listed are actually all Arab names. ‘Malik’ is the word for ‘king’ and ‘jamal’ is the word for ‘camel’. However, even though I had 2 years of Arabic at university, I’ve since forgotten what meaning Tariq and Ahmir have, if any. In fact, my own great-grandmother who was from a part of Syria, which later became Lebanon, was named ‘Leila’. That means ‘Night’.