[Carak19222]

That’s an interesting comment, that you ‘never understood why people give their kids the same names over and over and over.’ One reason is that to most white people a name isn’t a ‘real’ name unless it has tradition behind it — anything else is a weird, ‘made-up’ name. Another is that well-known names are easy to spell! If you give your name over the phone to a stranger as ‘Lisa’ or ‘Emma,’ most likely the person will know how to spell it, and won’t have to ask you, but if you give your name as ‘Lateisha’ they won’t be sure – and may well not remember it correctly. Especially if your name has a capital letter or an apostrophe in the middle of it, like ‘LaRuwa’ or ‘Mo’Nique’! (And by the way, there is nothing ‘African’ about this sort of name, as someone said in this forum.) There is also the danger that parents who don’t have a large vocabulary may choose names that sound nice to them, but are or contain real words with unfortunate meanings – like ‘Malice’ or ‘Arsenetta’ — two black names I have seen recently. One reason that whites tend to laugh at or stigmatize original black names is that they associate them with hickness or a low socio-economic class. After all, there have been quite a few rural and/or Southern whites who have given their children odd names or ordinary names with unusual spellings. When I was a teenager I wanted to respell my name with a Y instead of the usual E – my mother had a fit, saying that that looked ‘ignorant’ and would mark me as non-middle class. I wonder if this perception will change if there are more prominent (and non-show business) people with names like Condoleeza Rice – whose name, she said, comes from ‘con dolcezza,’ an Italian musical direction. I think the idea of giving children unique names is interesting, but I wouldn’t do it myself. Just my preference.

User Detail :  

Name : Carak19222, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Agnostic, Age : 60, City : Boston, State : MA, Country : United States, Occupation : high-tech professional, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class, 

[Author]

Posts