Posted on 03/30/2006 12:41:35 PM PST by twippo
Someone needs to sit our people down and have a healthy discussion about the names we as African Americans are giving our children. We are hurting our kids and putting their futures in peril from the moment they are born.
That’s right, I said it. We are KILLING our kids and crippling their futures with the names we give them. Don’t you want your kids to get JOBS someday? Good jobs, and serious careers? With a name like Jaquez Ja’Quan Diante’, you’re dooming your sons to a life of drug dealing on some seedy street corner.
Our Black men face enough challenges. I do not subscribe to the notion that we are giving our children names that “convey pride in their African Heritage”. We’re way off the mark. I’ve got dear friends from all over Africa, and their children have beautiful cultural names like Akos, Ama, and Fia.
Notice how neither of those names had a “quita” in it? Or an “eisha”? Or more than four syllables? That’s because even in the motherland, they don’t give their kids the crazy names that we do in Black America. Many Africans even RESENT the implication that these names stem from their culture. I’ve yet to meet anyone from any African nation named Shaquandiniquah Takei’sha, or any other of the ‘colorful’ monikers we’re pinning on brand new precious lives.
Parents, we are stacking the odds against our children from birth. We’ve been doing it for generations, but we get mighty cross when white and mainstream America laughs and mocks us. With a name like Quieshianiquita (I know, I can’t pronounce it either), you’re dooming your children to employment at no better than a dollar store or the nearest fast-food joint.
You are automatically relegated in the minds of many to second-class citizenry, because when they hear the name, they instantly categorize you as ignorant, ghetto, incompetent, uneducated, and not worthy of much respect or basic human considerations.
We hear so often about African American students who excel in school, etc. and “beat the odds.” Well, guess what? Often times, the “odds they have to beat” is the tough challenge of being taken seriously in America with the atrocious name you gave them...names like Jaqui’sheia Sha’qu’an Tai’isha. If they can get someone to look past the name (and quit laughing), there is remarkable talent there in that person.
Unfortunately though, much of mainstream America isn’t willing to find this out. Come in with the wrong name, and you are nothing more than fodder for stereotypical, distasteful jokes. We as African Americans face enough challenges as it is. Our kids deserve a better start and a way better shot than this.
You’re angry with me? I can live with that. Now answer this: when have you ever seen an IBM Executive or a fancy New York office with a fancy highrise office door nameplate that says “Quandaniquah Roshel-Shaquita, Chief Executive Officer”? When? You don’t, and you never have, because the reality is, corporate America and a huge chuck of mainstream doesn’t have a high regard for those names. Quite frankly, you won’t be taken seriously.
I’ve been behind many a closed door with white corporate America. Oddly enough, many of them still see the Negro in the room as ‘non-existent’ or invisible, so they talked like I wasn’t even in the room. I hear everything they say. When Nakia Shaniquah-Quashiqua fills out an application, they have a field day in the office. Once they get their fill of ghetto and ‘weave’ jokes and ripping you to pieces sight unseen, they usually toss the application, or it gets stuck in the ‘bottom of the pile’. If they do hire you, you’re relegated to some meaningless, inconsequential task behind the scenes so they won’t be embarrased by you.
I’ve learned the harsh truth that right or wrong, no quality mainstream company wants someone named (oh just pick a name) representing them in the forefront. We don’t hear that, though. We just want you to get the name right, and look at you funny if you don’t. I recall a time a young woman got really cross with me because her name was LaShi’quita and I forgot to capitalize the ‘S’ and left the little accent mark off the first ‘i’ - how was I supposed to know? But lawd ha’mercy...what did I do THAT for? She was mad, hostile, and ready to FIGHT! It was a BIG ridiculously overblown embarassing ordeal (for her), and that’s OUR fault, parents.
She wouldn’t have such a huge chip on her shoulder and be so defensive, confrontational and mean if we had just given her a name that the average person can pronounce or spell. No spell check in the world can help, so most of her existence is spent correcting the spelling of her name, and feeling disrespected because people can’t get it right. We set her up for this constant and unnecessary battle.
I do not advocate naming all our children Bobby and Susie. But let’s do our babies a favor and keep the syllables down to a minimum, leave out the suffixes “quita”, “sheika”,“eisha”, “niqua”, “quan”...anysuffix with the letter ‘Q’. I could go on, but you get where I'm headed.And if you want your child to have an authentic African or other ethnic name, do a little research. Don’t just make up a name and expect the world to be able to spell and pronounce it. You're not being original or cute. That child has to LIVE with that horrible name, and that's not funny...or cute.
Amen. Now pass the cornbread.
Did you get the commercials for his one album circa 1975. His old man was half a mobster and they tried to force a career, even had Paul Anka write some songs...(Do I Love You?). He was part of the NYC cultural landscape for a while.
See my 640, lol
Yeah I know but I probably should not have posted in the first place before forming my thoughts carefully. It happens.
Now I'm going to have to look up some sources to see where I got that!
Sadly you are not sh*tting me. Devotion to diversity. I'd love to peer edit her application. 530 SAT, and she gets to go to Amherst : (
Unnamed in the biblical text, she is called Makeda (not this way/not thus) in the Ethiopian tradition, and in Islamic tradition her name is Bilqis. Alternative names given for her have been Nikaule or Nicaula.
"He said he about lost it when one little twerp replied in a squeaky voice "Stonebreaker, sir".
LOL! That's a funny story, I hope it is really true!
" tragic naming is what Dr. Gonorrhea "
I keep coming back to the Dick Trickle thing!
The years creep slowly by, Lorena
The snow is on the grass again
The sun's low down the sky, Lorena
The frost gleams where the flowers have been
But the heart throbs on as warmly now
As when the summer days were nigh
Oh, the sun can never dip so low
A-down affection's cloudless sky.
Pretty tune; a lot more verses. Probably every single soldier on both sides knew the whole thing.
What a great sense of humor, "Blaxian", LOL.
Heres the bottom line,IMHO.
When I taught school in the hood down in New Orleans thirty five years ago,almost everyone had names like Gail,Edward,James,Deborah,Arlene,Annette,Anthony,Dorothy,etc.
Now its Sharnice,Dequan,Jamal,Tishawanna,Tamika,Demondre and Rovanna.
And so what?The good kids will do things the right way and the miscreants will keep up the drama.
The names of those invoved means nothing.
He grew up in western India, among Muslims, so his Indian stories draw on that tradition.
Thanks! Alternative spellings from the Arabic source. I'm a Kipling fan, so that's probably where I came up with it.
Asians are no smarter than whites,blacks or Latinos.
They simply work harder!
My mom was a nurse at Johns Hopkin Hospital in Baltimore in the late 1940s, often told the story of the new Black mother who named her child (girl) Placenta, because she thought it "sounded pretty".
Well, those dumb parents spelt the kid's name wrong. They were too dumb to know that G doesn't sound like J just whenever you want it to. The sound changes from a glottal stop (g) to an aspirated sound (j) preceding a short vowel (i or e).
Never before an A, O or U. Sorry, idiots.
"My name might be spelt 'Raymond Luxury Yacht, but it's pronounced 'Throat-warbler Mangrove!'" No, it doesn't work that way.
She likes her name, the only others she knows with it are Jamaican. That name traces into the history of Haile Selassie, Rastafarians and Ethiopia.
I found that Bilqis is a Muslim name. The Nikaule or Nicaula names are pretty, I wonder what their origin is. I wonder if that is where the name Nicole comes from.
My Dad wanted to name me after a boxer, Jabbo Lane. My Mom couldn't bring herself to do it. They wouldn't let her take me home without a name, so she looked around the room and named me after a box of tissue instead (Scott). Thank God the hospital didn't use Kleenex.
Thanks! Great to find out how that came about.
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