Hi SD,
I would like to know where people come up with names like Daquavion, Shaniqua, Latoya, LaShonda, D’quell, etc. I know there’s a Reddit article that discusses the socioeconomic assumptions made regarding the owners of such names, but I’m more interested in etymology. Are names like these most often assumed to belong to African Americans? If so, from what etymological sources are they drawn?
Dave
Latoya (according to Wikipedia) has its origins in Latin, basically a short form variant of Victoria combined with the La prefix. Its popularity in modern culture is mostly due to Latoya Jackson being given that name by her father, and Latoya then later becoming a celebrity.
Names with La/Le and De/Da prefixes come from French (La means the, and De means of or from, as in Leonardo Da Vinci, aka some guy named Leonardo from a place called Vinci). They made their way into African American culture through Louisiana Creole. They are often combined with French and Spanish names, as well as typical English names.
African-Americans mostly had typical European style names up until the 1950s and 1960s. Then you had popular figures like Mohammad Ali (born Cassius Clay) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born Lew Alcindor, I had to look that one up) who changed their names to represent a conversion to the Islamic faith. Names like Aisha, Aaliyah, and Tanisha are Arabic or Islamic.
There were also a lot of African Americans who changed their names to represent moving away from their slave heritage and slave owner names to names of their own choosing. In the past couple of decades, names along these lines seem to encourage creativity. While they may have some common traits like the Creole prefixes and common suffixes like -isha or -iqua, the names themselves are often made up and don’t necessarily have any history or etymology associated with them.
Moderator Note
Thread title edited to more clearly indicate the topic.
Oh. Like Mstislav, Řehoř, Friedrich, Juergen, Jean-Francois, Joris, Gijs, Remco, Per, Takis, Enver, or Alejandro?
Or do you actually not mean ‘European style names’?
Probably he meant European Germanic/English names. Perhaps not the Eastern European/Slavic names you have provided.
I was thinking more along the lines of English, French (again, largely due to the Creole influence), and a mix of others like German and Spanish, often along the same lines as the names of the slave owners, with the etymology of the names going back to western Europe and biblical sources…
Friedrich and Juergen are German, Jean-Francois is French, Alejandro is Spanish.
The very few French or Spanish names used to be “of French or Spanish origin” but part of the general trove of “names accepted as normal by Anglo-Americans”; for example Belle.
Onomastics.
Only two of those were Slavic. None of the others were. Some were Germanic, though. Still, I realize that’s what he meant, it’s just not what he said. His point was well taken but using ‘European’ in that context is a little nuts when he just means English with a sprinkling of other stuff thrown in.