The tone in which I was asked this question was not so nice, but since then I have wondered if any people were truly curious about the answer. The following is a theory I’ve always held. I only did a bit of research to confirm it more after I thought of writing this article.
When black* people were transported from Africa to America, they struggled greatly with retaining their culture. Not only was it unwelcome, but it was difficult for them to put energy into maintaining culture among their other struggles. Instead of retaining their language, for example, they focused on learning English without ESL training, resulting in the broken English often heard today.** Many other traditions were also slowly replaced with white American culture.
This was not entirely accepted by the black people. We worked to make our own culture through things like music and fashion, and names. Slave owners usually used “white,” easier names for their slaves and not the African ones.
When the black parents' names for their children became more relevant, the option of giving them African names did not exist because of our forgotten African culture. Instead of giving up and continuing to use white names, we chose to create our own names as one of the many ways we worked to build up a new culture to replace the one we lost.
Most cultures today have their own set of cultural names (even though these names are open to any culture).
--White American culture has names like Emily, Josh, Katie, and Connor.
-- Hispanic culture has names like Juan, María, José, and Pedro.
--Indian culture has Vihaan, Ananya, Arjun, and Aditya.
--Cultures within Europe and Asia are extremely diverse, but some of their most popular names include Benito, Isla, Leon, Lilou, and Hyun, Sakura, Minh, and Liang.
There are so many more cultures, and most Americans accept that names in these cultures will be different than the names in white culture, but it appears they are somewhat confused when they notice black people trying to build their own set of cultural names from scratch. Some of these names are Shanice, Tyrone, Ebony, and DeShawn.
*In this article, I will be using words like “race,” “white,” and “black,” despite evidence that these terms are inaccurate or significantly arbitrary.
**This refers to unintentional improper English, such as “I isn’t thinkin’ about it,” not black slang, such as “Man, they so fly!” Slang is part of the growing black culture, created by black people, not just a result of poor English education.
