British names and American names

[Dachs]

Stories about ostensible ridiculous black names could fill a book (woo stereotyping). My mom was working as a nurse in New Orleans and was present at one delivery where the happy couple decided to name their new son (!) Female (pron. fuh-maa-lee) after misreading the male-or-female checkbox (a sad comment on the state of Louisiana schools in the seventies and eighties more than anything else).

 

[Patroklos]

You are a victim of an urban legend. My mom is a labor and delivery nurse and that is one of her favorite jokes to tell. I have met several nurses who tell the same story.

 

[Dachs]

Nah, the Le-a story is the urban legend (probably)

 

[Red Door]

My friend is a teacher in inner-city Memphis (TFA, what else?) and had a student named La-A. It was pronounced "La Dash A." He also had a student named Abcd. I've seen the attendance sheets (created automatically by a computer system), so I can testify to their realness.

 

[NovaKart]

I've heard the story too except it was a female child.

 

[Traitorfish]

To be frank, until black people start calling their kids things like Fear-the-Lord, The-Lord-is-near, and If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned, white people should probably keep their mouths firmly closed on this issue.

When I was a kid I knew someone who had a boyfriend named Ian. She had this really strong country accent and for a long time I thought his name was In and she was just pronouncing it like EEan because of her accent. You know, the kind of accent that turns the word pen into two or three syllables.

I get the confusion, but, to be fair, isn't that more or less how it is pronounced?

 

[_random_]

I've never known a Joel. And the only Ian I know is part Polish.

Seriously? Joel is a common names among my friends and acquaintances. Of course, most of them come from evangelical Christian backgrounds, and naming your kid after a minor prophet was sort of in vogue among them in the 90s apparently.
In terms of bizarre names, our church gets a lot of white VBS kids from a nearby trailer park. I think the convention of stupid names is more common to lower classes than to black people in particular, it just seems to be the case since poverty is more common among black people.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Joel is not an uncommon name, but the one guy I know who spells his name that way is unusual in that he insists that it be pronounced with 2 very distinct syllables. That makes him sound more like a relative of superman than a minor prophet.

 

[warpus]

I've never known a Joel. And the only Ian I know is part Polish.

Yep, and he'd spell it Jan, which actually comes from the English name John.. or at least wherever the English John came from. So I'm not sure if there's relation to Ian, unless Ian and John have origins in the same name.

 

[Arakhor]

Considering that the Latin I & J are the same letter, yes, Ian/Iain and John come from the same root.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

John comes from the Latin Iōhannēs, which comes from the New Testament Greek Ἰωάννης (Iōannēs), which comes from the Hebrew יוֹחָנָ (Johanan), a shortened form of יְהוֹחָנָן (Yehochanan), meaning "YHWH is gracious,"

Ian comes from Eóin, the Irish Gaelic equivalent of John. In modern Ireland the name has mostly been replaced with Sean, which comes from the Old French Jehan, which comes from the Latin form of the name John.

 

[Traitorfish]

Ian comes from Eóin, the Irish Gaelic equivalent of John. In modern the name has mostly been replaced with Sean, which comes from the Old French Jehan, which comes from the Latin form of the name John.

Iain is still the standard form in Scottish Gaelic, though. ("Ian" is an Anglicisation, and the "proper" spelling is somewhat more common in Scotland as a result of a sort of "patriotic pedantry", I suppose you might call it.)

Edit: Although for some reason you still get the occasionally "Seonaidh", a Gaeliciation of "Johnny", or even "Shonie", an Anglicisation of the Gaelicisation, because we Scots apparently nothing better than going in circles.

 

[Tani Coyote]

The US is seemingly overrun with sanctimonious religious names such as Hope, Faith or Charity. Give a child a name, not a virtue!

Have you seen Hispanic naming trends?

I don't know many other cultures that actively use Jesus as a name. Maria seems to also be a common middle name if not a given one; indeed, the current King of Spain has it as a middle name!

Failing that, countless seem to be based on Bible figures. While Anglophone nations likewise have this trend, it seems even more pronounced in Hispanic cultures.

 

[Floating Pants]

Have you seen Hispanic naming trends?

I don't know many other cultures that actively use Jesus as a name. Maria seems to also be a common middle name if not a given one; indeed, the current King of Spain has it as a middle name!

Failing that, countless seem to be based on Bible figures. While Anglophone nations likewise have this trend, it seems even more pronounced in Hispanic cultures.

No, I don't think it has anything to do with being Hispanic bearing and biblical names.
It's just the difference of the name, and their choices. While whites prefer names like David or Joshua, Hispanics will prefer Jesus or Maria. I mean, look at how many whites are actually named after biblical people, it's very many. The only exception is you don't see white people named Jesus (as in, 'Jee-sus', not 'Hey-soos')

 

[Tani Coyote]

No, I don't think it has anything to do with being Hispanic bearing and biblical names.
It's just the difference of the name, and their choices. While whites prefer names like David or Joshua, Hispanics will prefer Jesus or Maria. I mean, look at how many whites are actually named after biblical people, it's very many. The only exception is you don't see white people named Jesus (as in, 'Jee-sus', not 'Hey-soos')

I suppose I've just come to view Hispanics as considering faith something even more important than non-Hispanics, upon seeing the various religious connotations in their language.

That and the prominence of Jesus and Maria just shows a deeper religiosity to me. Many non-Hispanics have Biblical names, yes, but from my experience, a Biblical name seems more common amongst Hispanics.

 

[Traitorfish]

I suppose I've just come to view Hispanics as considering faith something even more important than non-Hispanics, upon seeing the various religious connotations in their language.

That and the prominence of Jesus and Maria just shows a deeper religiosity to me. Many non-Hispanics have Biblical names, yes, but from my experience, a Biblical name seems more common amongst Hispanics.

I think that probably owes more to, on the one hand, the greater preference for traditional names among Hispanics than among Anglo-Americans, and, on the other, to a greater prominence of Biblical names in the Mediterranean tradition, rather than any hugely greater religiosity beyond that which is in itself part of the traditionalist bent. The catalogue of traditional British names has always had a greater body of common Germanic (Edward, Richard, William) and Celtic (Arthur, Brian, Aiden) names, for reasons that I assume are rather more historical than contemporary.

Also, the prominence of Maria reflects the prominence of the Virgin cult in Catholicism, rather than a deeper religiosity as such. Even among Irish Catholics, not noted for expressing quite the same devotion as Mediterraneans in their choice of names, "Mary" is still very common as a middle or confirmation name (two of my four sisters have a variant of it as a middle name).

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Have you seen Hispanic naming trends?

I don't know many other cultures that actively use Jesus as a name. Maria seems to also be a common middle name if not a given one; indeed, the current King of Spain has it as a middle name!

Failing that, countless seem to be based on Bible figures. While Anglophone nations likewise have this trend, it seems even more pronounced in Hispanic cultures.

No, I don't think it has anything to do with being Hispanic bearing and biblical names.
It's just the difference of the name, and their choices. While whites prefer names like David or Joshua, Hispanics will prefer Jesus or Maria. I mean, look at how many whites are actually named after biblical people, it's very many. The only exception is you don't see white people named Jesus (as in, 'Jee-sus', not 'Hey-soos')

Actually, you do see a lot of white guys named after Jesus. Joshua and Jesus are variant spellings of the same name.

The form Jesus (whether pronounced 'Jee-sus' in English or 'Hey-soos' in Spanish) comes from the Latin Iesus, which comes from the Greek Ἰησοῦς ('Ye-soos'), which comes from the Aramaic or casual Hebrew ישוע (Yeshua), which comes from the formal Hebrew יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (Yehoshua) meaning "YHWH is Salvation."

Joshua is a direct transliteration of the Aramaic/Hebrew name Yeshua (although English pronunciation has shifted since it was introduced). This makes it much closer to what Jesus of Nazareth was called in life. However, the Spanish pronunciation of Jesus is much closer to the proper Koine Greek pronunciation, which is what most Christians would have called Him in antiquity.


(In Latin alternate spellings were occasionally used to distinguish Jesus Christ from other men of the same name, but this was never the case in Greek. In Hebrew or Arabic you'll often see Jesus called ישו (Yashu), but that is a rather insulting alteration probably made to emphasize the view that Jesus was a false messiah who couldn't save anyone.)

 

[Glassfan]

Are all black/dark brown people in America called African-Americans? That might explain part of the misunderstanding.

The thing about black American names is that many of them are either not actually African in origin or are just made up names that sound African. The African part of African-American culture was almost entirely destroyed so much of the attempt to recreate it has been artificial, like the Kwanza holiday.

Actually many African-Americans prefer the term black and don't like being called African-American and don't identify with their African heritage, but then many do.

The race-name changes every decade or so.

since 2000 - African Americans
1980's/90's - Blacks
1970's - Afro Americans
1960's - Negroes
Pre1950's - The Colored
Pre1900's - Various disparaging and demeaning terms unlikely to make it past the censor.

While many African Americans have interesting, made-up combination names - Lebron or Twanita - or Muslim names like Kareem or Barrack, most have common everyday names like John or Mike or Janet.

I suppose many outside the United States obtain their views about this topic from observing African American entertainers, athletes and other celebrities (with stage names). But the vast majority are just common folk like you or me with common names.

There is a sensitivity about the topic as well, due to past injustice here. This may be humorously noticed in the oddball renaming of African Killer Bees (just brimming over with racial stereotyping) to "Africanized Bees".

 

[NovaKart]

When I was ın high school from what I remember about 2/3 of the Black students had "black sounding" names, some were a bit odd but mostly just variations of something starting with La. It was more common among females than males.

It's true that a lot of poor white people get into weird names too, like Neveah - Heaven backwards.

I've noticed a lot of Latinos including those not living in the US are now giving their kids Anglo names.

When I was in China most Chinese who worked with foreigners would choose an English name for the foreigners to use. Not knowing anything about naming trends, they would often choose very old fashioned names like Betty and Lucy.

 

[Glassfan]

When I was ın high school from what I remember about 2/3 of the Black students had "black sounding" names, some were a bit odd but mostly just variations of something starting with La. It was more common among females than males.

It's true that a lot of poor white people get into weird names too, like Neveah - Heaven backwards.

I've noticed a lot of Latinos including those not living in the US are now giving their kids Anglo names.

When I was in China most Chinese who worked with foreigners would choose an English name for the foreigners to use. Not knowing anything about naming trends, they would often choose very old fashioned names like Betty and Lucy.

Interesting. One thing I know is that some of the African American women I work with here at the hospital with those "black sounding" names (LaSonja, LaToya) have apparently learned their lesson and have given their own children "normal" sounding names.

Also, when I was in Japan (Okinawa), a lot of the local party girls took on what they thought were American names that they got from US TV shows - with hilarious pronunciation.