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I have a suggestion I give perspective parents: imagine the name you're considering with the word "President" in front of it.
As our current American president has proved, being obviously ethnic is not the issue. The issue is: the name has to be authoritative-sounding, spelled phonetically, and unlikely to be shortened into something silly. How would the name look in a headline or on a bumper sticker? If you have a long last name, keep the first name short and firm-sounding, Jane or Ben, for example. Any name two syllables or longer is going to be shortened no matter how hard you may try to have your Michael not called Mike.
And keep in mind that for every person here speaking out against creative and unusual African-American names, in much of the country there is a similar knee-jerk reaction against the multiple names white Southerns commonly give their children (Tommy Shane, Ricky Wayne, Janey Sue, Krissy Lee). Billy Bob Thornton might have made it in Hollywood, but it's unlikely he ever would have been president of Bank of America.
Why are names like Evelyn, Anne, and Melissa acceptable, but Keisha, Shaniqua and La'shonda looked down upon? Let's stop the madness and judge people by their actions.
The former are European and the latter are African American names. The name is meaningless, it should be about the individual. Shaniqua may be the honor student at Harvard, while Anne could very well be the heroin addict from a lilly white long island suburb.
For the record, I don't think traditionally "black" names are the only ridiculous names. When I say "ghetto" names....the names some white people name their kids are included as well. Like say....I don't know...."apple" for instance. I think Gwyneth Paltrow needs her lily white behind flogged for naming her kid after a fruit just as much as a black woman needs hers flogged for naming a child "Alize" or "Chardonnay". Stupidity knows no single ethnicity.
Certainly a person's name influences my perceptions of them. Saying "don't judge for something they can't help" is almost irrelevant. If their parents names them something distinctly urban, that is highly correlated with certain backgrounds/microcultures. Same with something very hillbilly, or ethnic. The influence may be positive or negative, depending.
You realize the all sorts of people live in "urban" areas. People of all backgrounds, right? And not all black people are from "urban" areas.
One thing I find pretty silly, is there are a host of so-called "ghetto" names, like Rashid, Aaliyah, Kareem and others that are actually Arabic names. SMH!
One thing I find pretty silly, is there are a host of so-called "ghetto" names, like Rashid, Aaliyah, Kareem and others that are actually Arabic names. SMH!
I wouldn't consider those "ghetto." Where did you hear/read that? In this thread? Or on a some kind of list?
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