Black Names Matter: The Black Names Book

By Bobby Cenoura

“Antwaneisha”, “Brionshay” and “Tayvion”—for some, pronouncing these names are a daunting task, and for others, it’s a symbol of cultural identity. Black Names Matter: The Black Names Book defines names commonly referred to as “Ghetto”, “Ratchet” and “Hood”, in A

• Language: English
• Publisher: Slice of Pain Publishing and Media, LLC
• Release date: Nov 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9780692574195

Bobby Cenoura

Bobby Cenoura was born and raised in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan area and has seen sweeping change in the area since the 1980s, which inspires a lion's share of his literature. The "Male Angst" genre was created by Bobby Cenoura to highlight what many men know but don't often write about. Cenoura's writing style uses human interaction, eroticism, and cultural awareness while focusing on the tradeoffs average modern men make in the postmodern dating world.

Book preview

Black Names

What’s in a Name?

William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet is a classic love story about a couple from rival families. When asking why they can’t be lovers (because they have surnames of rival families), Juliet says to Romeo: What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. According to Juliet, the name of the flower doesn’t change its pleasing olfactory characteristics.

But how do our names define us? The purpose of this book is to have fun with Black Names, offer some explanations of their origins, and point out that they are just unique name combinations, borrowed from many different cultures, and are not African in origin per se.

How to Read this Book

A Black name may be repeated several times in this book, may have different spellings yet be phonetically similar. Take the name Rayvon for example. Here are a few reasons why a person’s name is Rayvon:

1. His father’s name is Raymond and his mother’s name is Yvonne. Rayvon is a combination of those two names; and/or,

2. The parent(s) wanted to choose between naming their baby boy Ray or Vaughn but decided to name the baby both; and/or,

3. They didn’t want to just name their baby Vaughn, but wanted to affix a vowel prefix in front for originality. In this case Ray-von could have been named Dayvon, Jayvon, or Tayvon, simply by affixing a different prefix.

This book is by no means the authority on the etymology of Black-sounding names, just an exploration into the many possible origins of these unique names.

What are Black Names and Where Do They Come From?

In Skee-Lo’s 1995 hit song called I Wish, he wrote:

I would play ghetto games, name my kids ghetto names—Little Mookie, Big Al, Lorraine

These Black names, Black-sounding names, or ghetto-names are all terms for unique naming conventions predominantly used by African Americans that seem to hail from lower-income areas.

The lion’s share of Black names aren’t really Black in the sense that they don’t originate from Africa:

Researchers that looked at Census records have found that 100 years ago, the 20 most popular names were largely the same for both Blacks and Whites; now…(n)ames like DeShawn and Shanice are almost exclusively Black, while Whites, whose names who have also become increasingly distinctive, favored names like Cody and Caitlin.[2]

Most people are aware that in movies such as Alex Haley’s Roots, African names were forcibly removed from the slaves and replaced with the master’s European originated name. So where did ‘DeShawn’ and ‘Shanice’ (which you will later see is a concatenation of De (meaning of or belongs to) and Shawn (a variant of ‘Sean’) and a concatenation of Shawn and Denise) come from?

The divergence in names began during the 1960s, where cultural solidarity was a cornerstone of the Civil Rights movement:

[Yvonne’s parents] were Black Panthers, part of the Black power and Black pride movement that came to force in the late 1960s.[5]

Using unique sounding names could have been a way to identify with being Black, and fulfilling a need to create a separate cultural identity and instill pride.

[Blacks] have chosen increasingly distinctive names over the past century with the trend accelerating during the 1960s.[2]

Do Black Names Affect Economic Prospects/ Progress?

Black Names and Economic Prospects/Progress

In the movie Coach Carter, when a pregnant girl responds Loquisha when she is asked what she planned to name her baby, her friend replies: Well she might as well have the name ‘Food Stamps’.

This brings to light a controversial topic that has been debated:

Does having a Black-sounding name hinder economic advancement?

According to a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), it does. The study entitled Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination, NBER Working Paper No. 9873," summarizes that having a Black-sounding name reduced the callback for interviews on job applications by 50% in comparison to a White-sounding name.[3]

Especially with an African American President, part of the underlying debate about Black names concerns whether we are yet progressive enough as a nation to understand the rich cultural diversity implicit in Black names and treat all people equally, regardless of the origin of those names.

Michelle Botus, a 37-year-old African American student at Bunker Hill Community College, has named her four children Asia, Alaysia, Khalima and Denzil. Botus stated the following:

[I would] advise mothers to choose names they like, then make sure their children get the education they need to rise above any discrimination they face.[2]And she goes on to say: The fact you didn’t give the child the name you wanted, your regrets could be manifested in other ways later on…I would say [name your child a Black name].[2]

Ms. Botus, whose first name Michelle is White-sounding,, advises ... rising above discrimination through education. Her advice conflicts with empirical evidence regarding Black names.

In an article entitled In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close Racial Gap, an African American named Barry Jabbar Sykes stated that he earned a degree in mathematics from Morehouse College and went by the named Jabbar all his life. Nonetheless, when he searched for an IT position he thought it more helpful to use the name Barry J. Sykes.[4]

He goes on to say: ‘Barry’ sounds like I could be from Ireland.[4]

Even for college educated Black men, race plays an important role. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, at the time of the article (2009), the unemployment rate for Black male college grads 25 and older was nearly twice the similar rate for White male college graduates—eight percent versus four percent.

A New York Times (NYT) article titled ‘Whitening’ the Resume speaks about Tahani Tompkins, who was struggling to get a callback for a job interview. She subsequently used T. S. Tompkins on her job applications.

Ms. Tompkins and Ms. Orr [another interviewee] were among the more than two dozen college-educated Blacks interviewed…A half-dozen said they had taken steps to hide their race, or at least dial back the level of Blackness signaled in their resumes.[5]

In addition, an article published in the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (CGSB) titled Racial Bias in Hiring, reported research indicated that White job applicants who had higher quality resumes (resumes indicating more higher education) received 30 percent more callbacks than Whites with lower quality resumes. For Blacks, the result was only 9 percent more callbacks for improvements in their credentials.[1]

The evidence from the NYT and CGSB articles and research provided by the NBER debunks the advice Ms. Botus gave about education allowing an individual to ‘rise above’ discrimination. As noted above, college educated Blacks feel the need to ‘whiten’ their resumes either by omitting their Black names, or modifying other aspects of their resume to get an interview.

The Names Debate

The Names Debate

Ms. Orr’s parents were Black Panthers…[b]ut even Ms. Orr’s mother, counseling her about her resume, said, ‘You don’t need to shout out, I’m Black’.[5]

This begs another question. Since not all African-Americans give their children Black names, to what degree does the research regarding resume callbacks reflect intentional racism? In other words, if an African American’s name was Hubert Humphrey, how does the research about Black-sounding names determine how Hubert would be affected in the job market?

Discrimination in many cases may not even be intentional…but simply a matter of people gravitating toward similar people, casting about for the right cultural fit, a buzzword often heard in corporate circles.[4]

This touches upon the difference between racial and ethnic/ cultural discrimination. Not all African Americans subscribe to the lower income culture, a culture that is often associated with Black names.

This topic comes close to the Sounding White debate where African Americans who spoke non-AAVE [African American Vernacular English (i.e. Ebonics)] faced reverse discrimination in their own communities—as African American speech is a measure of Blackness.[7]

Therefore one can conclude that African Americans are not a static racial and socioeconomic group, but a dynamic and diverse culture with divisions—in this case, by class.

Research conducted indicates Black names are associated with lower socioeconomic status, but the authors [by NBER’s Roland Fryer and University of Chicago’s Steven Levitt] don’t believe it’s the names that create an economic burden.[2]

The data appears to imply that while a Black name can come out of the ‘hood, it is not the name but the circumstances of being hood that affects the individual’s progress. After analyzing data that tracked women’s socio-economic circumstances in zip codes over time, Mr. Fryer concluded:

[T]he data [shows] that a poor woman’s daughter is more likely to be poor when she gives birth herself—but no more so because she has a distinctively Black name…It’s not really that your name is Kayesha that matters, it’s that you live in a community where you’re likely to get that name that matters.[2]

I believe that Mr. Fryer, either because he is only reporting the observable summaries of the data, or attempting to be politically correct, is ignoring the human component.

I challenge him by asserting that humans are not only affected by their environment, they also affect it. There is a feedback loop. The relationship between being raised poor/low income and being poor/low income at the time of childbearing and rearing are not two separate and mutually exclusive events.

Assets and income are tied together, because assets generate income. If a person is raised without assets, it follows that he or she would be less likely to have the connections and social standing to generate a substantial, game-changing income. Also being raised poor entails a different value system when it comes to acquiring and managing money—as most money is spent on basic needs versus investing for the future.

After reviewing the data from my research, it seems that if employers had to fill a diversity quota and they had to choose between two African American job applicants who have the same qualifications, except one is named William and the other named Tyreef, they would choose William.

Organizations in corporate America expect their employees to conform to their respective cultures. If you work at Best Buy, you would be expected to wear a blue shirt, and you would probably be expected to know and/or recite some type of company credo. This is calledconformity. In order for the organization to survive, it needs its members to conform to its standards.

In reality, having a White name isn’t conforming since White names in America came before Black names. But alluding to the Civil Rights movement and solidarity examples I noted previously, the origin of Black names is an overt backlash against conformity—something that is not necessarily conducive to an organization that survives on cookie cutter systems and operations. Now if