Is your baby's name a reflection on you?

When a baby is born, the name reflects more about the parents than the child, says Laura Wattenberg, author of The Baby Name Wizard. “It’s about the parents, their class, values and personality.” For African-Americans choosing a name for their child is more complex because of the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. Historically, black Americans have been defined by Eurocentric names established through slavery and passed down generations. During the Black Power Movement of the 1960s, African-Americans abandoned what they considered as “slave names” and opted for more meaningful Afrocentric alternatives. Even here, though, the choice is muddled, with some choosing “real” African names and others going for African-sounding names such as Tiana, Tyquan or Shemika. Georgia-born Molefi Kete Asante, a leading Afrocentric scholar, concedes his birth name is Arthur Lee Smith,Jr., but he adopted Asante after a life-changing trip to Ghana in 1973 opened his eyes to “how dislocated and out-of-sync he was to his historical reality.” Unsurprisingly, Asante has given all his children African names. His daughter is Eka, from the Ibibio people of southern Nigeria and his son is Molefi Kumalo. Molefi is South African and the origin of Kumalo is Zulu. “Just as I wouldn’t give my children Swedish, Chinese or Japanese names I didn’t want to give them English names,” says Astante, a professor at the department of African-American Studies at Temple University. “So many of us live in an insane asylum; we don’t juxtapose the difference between our historical reality and the meaning of names.” Asante, the author of over 70 books, including The Book of African Names and African Names and Their Meanings, adds “we are victims of the slave master” and “took on names he gave us,” but he says, “I refuse to take on a name that has no meaning and I refuse to be a puppet.” “African names are a statement of pride, but there is often an element of style. Black American parents tend to choose names from Africa that sound good to the American ear,” says Wattenberg. (more…)

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