Seeking origin of odd name

There is a former Houston city councilman and general politician who goes by the name of Jew Don Boney. While I understand it can be good for a politician to have a memorable name, this one causes me amusement and confusion.

“Don” is a normal enough name, and “Boney,” while unusual, is not unusual enough to fall under the category of “weird.” However, I have never heard of someone using “Jew” as a name, and am intensely curious as to what the etymology / history of this name is (if indeed it differs from the common meaning of “Jew”), and more importantly, why someone (who, moreover, is not Jewish) would use it as a name.

Any ideas?

Simple. Your link reveals his full name to be Jew Don Boney Jr.. So he obviously got the name from his father!

Why his grandparents named his father that remains the unanswered question.

Plenty of people have Christian as a first name, and I don’t expect they are all christians.

As the page you linked includes his e-mail address, you could ask him. It’s a toss-up whether he’d answer, though.

Whereas, every Tom, Dick, and Harry is named yBeayf?

While I’ve been well aware of Houston’s incarnation of Al Sharpton (no, he’s not really quite as bad as Al, but similar) forever, I don’t know the origin of Jew Don Boney’s first name. The only seemingly potentially fruitful google hit, a website entitled black jew, crashes my browsers when I try to access it. Perhaps you’ll have better luck.

I looked at that website, and it appears to link to some sort of browser hijacking thingy (not sure, I’m not running iexplore).

I may just wind up emailing him, as Loopus suggested. I wouldn’t think it would be the first time he’s been asked.

Although I’ve never seen or heard of “Jew” as a name, apparently he’s not the only one: Origin and Meaning of First Name Jew.

Yehudi Menuhin (the violinist) had the same first name, too. Ditto for any Jew with the name Yehuda.