The austere pages of “Who’s Who in America” are adorned with many strange names, e.g., Champion, Dallas Dayton, Erdis,2 Zeno, Balpha, Doel, Amor, Ival, Tubal, Zellmer and Cola, though they are naturally less numerous than among the sturdy yeomen of Oklahoma and Texas. There are congressmen (1948) named Omar, Rolla, Prince, Oren, Wint, Fadjo and Thor, and bishops named Angie, Noble and Vedder. The newspapers are constantly turning up given-names of a fantastic improbability. In 1944 E. Pluribus Unum Husted was found in Oklahoma City, though he was a native of Quincy, Ill.3 In 1936 Willie 3/8 Smith was unearthed in rural Georgia.4 In 1901 Loyal Lodge No. 296 Knights of Pythias Ponca City Oklahoma Smith was baptized at Ponca City.5 The late Cap Anson, manager of the Chicago baseball club, was baptized Adrian Constantine because his mother was born at Adrian, Mich., and his father at Constantine in the same State.1
Every Southern town boasts a Negro denizen who is exhibited to strangers as Seaboard Airline Railway Jackson, Way Down Upon the Swanee River Johnson, Are You Ready For the Judgment Day Brown or Sunday Night Supper Jones, but most such grotesque names, I am convinced, are invented by sportive whites and accepted only to gain their attention and favor. They may be bestowed now and then at baptism in the village creek, but that is only because the majority of Southern blackamoors regard pedo-baptism as unscriptural, and hence do not go into the water until they have passed their nonage – long after their names have been determined, whether by Caucasian fiat, by their own choice, or by public acclamation. All the students who have investigated Aframerican onomastics in a scientific spirit have found such monstrosities to be few and far between, and when a particularly amazing specimen is reported the news of it usually comes at second or third hand. Dr. Urban T. Holmes, of the University of North Carolina, who undertook, in 1930, a survey of the names of 722 Negro school-children in a typical mill-town of that State, found that 544 bore ancient and commonplace names on the order of Mary and Margaret, James and William, that 136 boasted such fancier but none the less familiar names as Clarissa and Eugenia, Elbert and Gordon, and that only 44 were adorned with such inventions as Orcellia and Margorilla, Sandas and Venton.2
In a study of the names of 22,105 colored college students − 12,220 females and 9,885 males —, reported in 1938, Dr. Newbell N. Puckett, of Western Reserve University, found a considerably higher incidence of what he called “unusualness,” to wit, 15.3% among the females and 8.4% among the males, but he neglected, unhappily, to define “unusualness” or to give any examples of it, so his figures must be accepted with caution. On examining the Negro given-names in “Who’s Who in Negro America,” including those of parents, spouses and children, he found a “rate of un-usualness,” for the two sexes together, of 7.6% among individuals born before 1870, one of 9.8% among those born between 1870 and 1900, and one of 15.6% among those born since the latter year. Here, again, he failed to define “unusualness,” but inasmuch as his criterion, whatever it was, was apparently applied alike in all three periods, it is safe to accept his conclusion that “the rate of unusualness with the females seems to be on the increase.” The same applies to his examination of lists of students in two colored colleges – one in South Carolina and the other in Arkansas. At the former he found 10.3% of “unusualness” before 1901, and 17.5% in 1935. At the latter the rate was 14.6% from 1900 to 1919, 22.4% from 1920 to 1929, and 35.6% in 1935.1
Here the effect of the circumambient white Kultur is well displayed. The fact that fancy names were more than twice as numerous among the Negroes of Arkansas as among those of South Carolina was precisely what one might have expected. My own examination of lists of Southern colored students indicates that their density, as among the white population, runs in inverse proportion to the degree of local civilization. In a roster of undergraduates at the North Carolina College for Negroes at Durham, a high-toned seminary, I find less than a dozen fancy names among nearly 600, and in the catalogue of Tuskegee Institute for 1946–47, listing students of a decidedly ambitious and superior class, with relatively cultured home backgrounds, the ordinary given-names run to at least 90%. I encounter, to be sure, some eyebrow-lifting Arrenwinthus, Berneths and LaFauns, but they would be outnumbered at least six to one by the Fledareas, Jessoises, Merhizes and Oyonnas in any comparable white list from Oklahoma, Arkansas or the Baptist areas of Louisiana and Texas.
On the lowest social level the study of Negro given-names is impeded by a fact already mentioned – that the sacrament of baptism is delayed among the majority of blacks until they are sturdy enough to stand a violent ducking, by which time they have often become known to their friends by pet-names or nicknames, and are disinclined to change them. Many of them are illegitimate, with less family ties than a wild thing in the woods. Thus it is not surprising to find occasional names like the following, all of which are supported by plausible evidence:
Alligator1
Ape
Big Boss2
Blasphemy3
Bootjack4
Bo-peep5
Buckshot6
Bugger7
Bus
Cupid
Cutie8
Damfino9
Deck10
Doodle Bug
Dove-Eye11
Extra12
Fraidy
Frog
Gee-Whiz
Goat
Goose13
Handbag14
Himself15
Ivory16
Jingo17
Loven Kisses18
Luck19
Magazine20
Mama’s Baby21
Me
Mister22
Monkeydo23
Nerve
Pill24
Ping25
Possum
Pudding1
Radio
Rascal
Rat
Satchel
Sausage
Sooner
Sugar2
Sunbeam3
Trigger
Trouble4
Two-Bits5
Victrola
Many of the double names in vogue among the dark blanket Christians of the South are the product of piety, for the Negro, on all save his highest levels, is almost as religious as the white cracker. Examples are King Solomon, Queen Esther, Holy Moses and Virgin Mary.6 Once in a while these combinations run to formidable length, recalling the worst imbecilities of the Puritans, e.g., I Will Arise and Go Unto My Father,7 Jesus Christ and Him Crucified, Matthew Mark Luke John Acts of the Apostles. There are also cognate prodigies in the secular field, e.g., Pictorial Review,8 Quo Vadis, Lake Erie, and, when a romantic colored mother decides to shoot the works, Christine Nancy Luanna Jane Rio Miranda Mary Jane, George Washington Thomas Jefferson Andrew Jackson,9 Georgia May Virginia Dare Martha Annie Louise,10 Mary Beatrice Love Divine Ceeno Tatrice Belle Caroline11 or (a mixed example) Daisy Bell Rise Up and Tell the Glory of Emanuel.12 Some of the pious names show a considerable shakiness in Bible scholarship, e.g., Deuteronomy, Ecclesiastes, Judas Iscariot, Ananias, Verily,13 Balaam, Cain, Herod, Archangel and Onan. I have even heard of a colored boy baptized Jehovah.14
Among the secular names showing the same talent for absurdity I find Delirious, Anonymous, Neuralgia,15 Iodine, Sterilize, Sal Hepatica, Morphine, Castor Oil, Ether, Constipation,1 Castile, Jingo, Vaseline and LaUrine.2 Public events and wonders often suggest names to Negro mothers, e.g., Submarine,3 Radio, High Water, Prohibition,4 Blitzkrieg,5 Pearl Harbor,6 Hardtimes and NRA.7 It is not uncommon for a boy given the name of some great hero, clerical or lay, to take the hero’s title as well, e.g., Sir Walter Raleigh8 and Saint Patrick.9 But all such oddities remain relatively rare and are seldom if ever encountered among Negroes above the total immersion level.
The names of black slaves have been investigated by Puckett.10 His material ranges in date from 1619 to 1865, and embraces 12,000 names. He finds that the earliest slaves usually had commonplace English or Spanish given-names, with John and Mary in the lead. His first example of what la
ter came to be regarded as a characteristically Negro name, to wit, Sambo, is found in Maryland in 1692. During the Eighteenth Century Cuffy, Cudjo, Mungo and Quashie appeared, and the prevailing classical influence showed itself in such names as Caesar, Cato, Hannibal and Ulysses. But the old names held their own, as they did among the whites, with John in the lead for men, followed by Henry, George, Sam, Jim, Jack, Tom, Charles, Peter, Joe, Bob and William, and Mary in the lead for women, followed by Maria, Nancy, Lucy, Sarah, Harriet, Hannah, Eliza, Martha, Jane, Amy and Ann. By the beginning of the Nineteenth Century Negro nomenclature began to take on the patterns it shows today. After Emancipation it was assimilated by the given-name patterns and fashions of the whites, though perhaps with a larger admixture of downright ridiculous names and a lesser admixture of mere fancy names. Says Puckett:
With freedom,… Romeo Jones signed his name Romey O. Jones, and Pericles Smith became Perry Clees Smith. A boy who had always been known as Polly’s Jim, having learned to read the New Testament,1 became Mr. Apollos James. Slave Sam of Mississippi became Sam Buck when his master acquired another Sam, but under the exhilaration of freedom he expanded into Sam Buck Jeemes Ribber Highoo and indulged in other vagaries, such as feeding his dog gunpowder to make him brave. Corinthia Marigold Wilkinson Ball Wemyss Alexander Jones Mitchell owed her collection of names to the fact that she had been owned successively by half a dozen families and after Emancipation took the names of them all.2
The American Negroes, save in one small and isolated area, have dropped the names they brought with them from Africa, and also the Indian names that they picked up in the New World. That single area is the Gullah country along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts, including the offshore islands. Its speech, as we have seen in Chapter VII, Section 4, has been studied by Dr. Lorenzo D. Turner, of Fisk University. Most of the 6,000 African words that survive in Gullah are personal names. “In some families on the Sea Islands,” writes Dr. Turner,3 “the names of all the children are African. Many have no English names, though in most cases the African words in use are mere nicknames. Very few of the Gullahs of today know the meaning of these names; they use them because their parents and grandparents did so.” Some of Turner’s examples, with their languages of origin and original meanings, are:
Abeshe (Yoruba): worthless.
Aditi (Yoruba): deaf.
Agali (Wolof): welcome.
Alamisa (Bambara): born on Thursday.
Alovizo (Jeji): inflamed fingers or toes.
Anika (Vai): very beautiful.
Arupe (Yoruba): short.
Asigbe (Ewe): market day.
Bafata (Mende): high tide.
Bambula (Kongo): to transfer by witchcraft.
Boi (Mende): a first-born girl.
Dodo (Ewe): a forest.
Dutala (Mandinka): midnight.
Foma (Mende): a whip.
Hama (Mende): the rainy season.
Hawa (Mende): lazy.
Holima (Mende): patience.
Ishi (Kimbundu): the ground.
Kowai (Mende): war.
Kuta (with the u like oo in foot): a salt-water turtle, the totem of some of the clans of Gambia.
Lainde (Fula): a forest.
Mandze (Mende): a girl born at night.
Maungau (Kongo): a hill.
Momo (Bambara): to ry into.
Mumu (Mende): dumo.
Randa (Wolof): a thicket.
Sanko (Mende): one of triplets.
Simung (Mandinka): time to eat.
Sina (Mende): a female twin.
Suango (Mende): proud.
Suni (Bambara): fasting.
Sukuta (Mandinka): night is arriving.
Tiwauni (Yoruba): it is yours.
Winiwini (Jeji): delicate.
It will be noted that many of these relate to personal characteristics or to the place or circumstances of birth. Turner reports that the Gullahs carry this habit of name-making into English. “In addition to the names of the months and day,” he says, “the following are typical: Blossom (born when the flowers were in bloom), Wind, Hail, Storm, Freeze, Morning, Cotton (born in cotton-picking time), Easter and Harvest.” He does not include the once familiar Cuffy in the list of names he sends me, but I am told by Mr. Marcus Neville, of London,1 that it is in common use on the Gold Coast, and is there thought to be derived from a Fanti word, cofi. The DAE traces it to 1713 and calls it “of African origin.” It died out after the Civil War.2 In my boyhood in Maryland the name commonly applied to a colored girl whose actual name was unknown was Liza, and a strange colored boy was similarly called Sam or Rastus, but both are now extinct.
The Mormons, in their early days, extracted a roster of names for their male offspring from the Book of Mormon, and to this day some of them are still called Nephi, Mahonri, Lehi, Laman and Moroni; also, the custom survives among them of naming the seventh son of a seventh son Doctor.1 Other curious names, chiefly loans from afar, e.g., Luana and Aloha, testify to the fact that every pious Mormon must go on a missionary journey in his youth. But all these names are falling into disuse and the young of today bear the same fancy appellations that prevail among other Bible searchers, e.g., Filna, Geneal, WaNeta, LeJeune, Janell and Myldredth for girls; Legene, Rondell, La Mar, Herald (Harold?) and Wildis for boys, and LaVon and LaVerne for both sexes.2 Indeed, it is possible that this murrain of made-up names was launched upon the country by the Saints, for as long ago as the 1836–44 era their prophet and martyr, Joseph Smith, had wives named Presindia, Zina, Delcena and Almera.3
The willingness of Jews to change their surnames, noted in Section 1 of the present chapter, is more than matched by their willingness to adopt non-Jewish given-names. This process is anything but new, for the Jewish exiles brought back many names from the Babylonian Captivity, and Moses himself apparently bore an Egyptian name.4 Other names were borrowed from the other great nations of antiquity, e.g., Feivl and Kalman, from the Greek Phoebus and Kelonymos.5 From medieval times onward borrowing and adaptation have gone on in all countries. Thus Abraham has been transformed in Russia into Abrasha, in France into Armand, in Germany into Armin, in Austria into Adolf, in England into Bram, and in the United States into Albert, Arthur and Alvin.6 In the same way Isaac, an ancient Hebrew name meaning to laugh, has become Ignatz in Galicia, Isidor in France and Germany, and Irving, Irwin, Edward and even Edmund in the United States,7 and Samuel has been supplanted by Sidney, Stanley, Sylvan, Seymour, Sanford and Salwyn or Selwyn, some of which also do duty as substitutes for Solomon. Even the sacred name of Moses has given way in Russia to Misha, in France and Italy to Moïse1 or Maurice, in Germany to Moritz, and in the United States to Morris, Morton, Mortimer, Marcus, Marvin, Melvin, Martin, Milton, Murray and even Malcolm.
It will be noted that in nearly all these cases the initial letter is preserved.2 Roback, lately cited, says that often the original Jewish name survives “underneath and complementary to the protective Gentile name” and “it is this original name that is pronounced over them, following a whispered conference between rabbi and relatives, just before the last remains are gathered to their fathers.” In many cases the widespread adoption of Gentile names by Jews has led to their abandonment by Gentiles. This is true, for example, of Moritz and Harry in Germany,3 and it probably had something to do with the gradual disappearance of certain Old Testament names, e.g., Abraham, Isaac and Moses, in mid-Nineteenth Century America.4 In not a few cases the Jews have adopted names of distinctively Christian character, e.g., the Yiddish Nitul, which is related to Natalie, meaning a child born at Christmas. Dolores, taken from Mater Dolorosa, one of the names of the Virgin Mary, offers another example. In the same way Alexander and Julius were borrowed from the heathen centuries ago.
Of late the Jews have taken to naming their sons John, Thomas, Mark, James and Paul, not to mention Kenneth, Chester, Clifton, Bennett, Leslie, Lionel, Tracy and Vernon.5 Roback reports that of the four presidents of the leading Jewish theological seminaries of the United States in
1946 three were named Stephen, Louis and Julian. Another distinguished rabbi has the name of Beryl,1 a late president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis was Edward, and a rabbi who got into the Congressional Record with an Armistice Day address in 1945 was Norman.2 The changes that have gone on during the past century and a half are well shown by the family-tree of the American Guggenheim family.3 The founder was Simon, born in 1792, and his wife was Rachel. Their son was Meyer and their oldest grandson was Isaac. Among their other grandsons were Daniel, Solomon and Benjamin, but interspersed among them were Murry, Robert and William. In the fourth generation the Stammhalter was Robert. After that the male line began to languish, but meanwhile there were many daughters, and among them were Lucille, Natalie, Diana, Margaret, Joan, Beulah, Edyth Helen, Marguerite, Eleanor and Gertrude. Some of these daughters (not counting those who married Goyim) had children or grandchildren named Jean, Jack, Roger, Norman, Betty, Gene, Janet, Terrence, Gwendolyn, Harold, Willard, Timothy and Mary Ann. Thus Jewish given-names are being rapidly assimilated to the general American stock, including the stock of fancy names. Shirley is now probably more common among Jewish girls than among Christians, and Tommie Mae, Luciel and V-Etta may be only around the corner. The Sephardic or Spanish Jews seem to cling to their traditional given-names much more firmly than the Ashkenazim4 e.g., Benjamin, Elias, Abraham, David, Emmanuel, Nathaniel, Solomon, Nathan, Isaac, Miriam, Rachel and Rebecca,5 but even the Sephardim have begun to weaken, and there are individuals of their proud clan in New York named Ernest, William, Robert, Harold, Edgar and John.6
The impact of Hitler made the American Jews acutely race-conscious, and from 1933 onward there was some tendency to go back to Jewish names.7 But it did not proceed very far. Among the refugees in Palestine, however, it went to great lengths and is still in progress.1 The Palestine Gazette is full of notices of changes of name registered with the Commissioner for Migration and Statistics, e.g., Leopold to Bezalel, Adolf to Abraham or Zeev, Stefan to Yaaqov, Bernhard to Dov, Eugen and Leo to Yehuda, Dora to Devora, Kurt to Yoel or Amnon, Felicia to Ilana, Gottfried to Yedidya, Franz to Yehiel, Wilhelm and Felix to Uri, Nina to Suad, Mendel to Menahem, Veronica to Adina, Edith to Dina, Zelda to Yardena, Frida to Tsipora, Irma to Miriam or Naomi, Clara and Rose to Shoshana and Sylvia to Shifrah.2 Moses Levene, in a pamphlet designed to interest English Jews in their ancient given-names,3 says that the following, among others, have been revived in Palestine:
American Language Supplement 2 Page 72
