Same here. I went to a school that was majority white, but there were quite a few black kids too. And they all had the same names as white kids did. I sometimes wonder, when and why did we get to where black mothers decide to make up names for their children.
Lack of reading comprehension?
Remember the story of L - sha?
(LaDasha)
I too. Largely the names were normal.
I say it’s the whole martyr thing. As we see now, again, with these riots, blacks are jealous of their ancestors and want to play martyr, and have oh-whoa-is-me attention placed on them. They wish to have this martyrdom, and envy the old days when it could be legitimate.
So, blacks started naming their kids ridiculous made-up names and allegedly African names, to get away from the oppressors’ culture, and make it clear they are different from others.
Of course, at the same time whites started naming kids pretentious names, spelling normal names weirdly, using last names as first, and endless parade of “Irish” names no one ever used before 1980.
Everyone has heard of the semi-literate black woman who upon seeing her daughter’s hospital ID bracelet with the word ‘female’ on it decided that the hospital had already selected a name for her baby. She pronounced it Fay-mall-ee.
I have never heard any explanation for the many variations of LoQueeSha and the AintOne that we hear nowadays.
My senior class, there were just four black kids. Gary, Michelle, Donna and Booker T. Washington. Elementary school there was Tony and James also. Other classes in my yearbook were regular names, Dennis, Herbie, June, Pansy, April, Debbie, Barbara, Loretta, Vernon...no made up weird names.
Scrabble was popular in Negro neighborhoods back then and they got used to dumping a bunch of letters out of the Scrabble bag then rearranging them until they got something that sounded exotic. I just call most of them Scrabble.