Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

Thank you.

Jemima *is* in a different category than the other names. It was a Hebrew
name and a relic of slavery, when white owners had the right to determine
the names of their slaves, and gave them, among other sorts of names, Old
Testament and Classical names. See

http://rainbowwarrior.coa.edu/laura/move/africanamerica.htm

and

http://www.stratfordhall.org/africa.html?RESEARCH

And see the review for "Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima"
by M.M. Manring at

http://www.upress.virginia.edu/books/manring.html

In the UK the name Jemima was in use long before there was the slightest
possibility of any African-American influence.

I have just looked in a book with lists of suggested names for children. The
book is undated but was purchased in 1936 or 1937.  Jemima is in the list of
girls' names. It is also in more recent books of names. I haven't actually
met a Jemima - ever.

JEMIMA   f   Biblical, English
Pronounced: je-MIE-ma
Means "dove" in Hebrew. This was the oldest of the three daughters of
Job in the Old Testament.

Source:

http://www.behindthename.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?terms=jemima&nmd=n&gender
=both&operator=or

A nice name forever tainted because of its associatin with "Aunt Jemima"
in the minds of black Americans, and therefore as suspect for them as
"Uncle Tom."

DENZEL   m   English
Pronounced: den-ZEL
From a surname which originally belonged to a person from Denzell in
Cornwall. The name of the town possibly means either "fort" or "fertile
upland" in Cornish.

As far as I am able to determine it is the name he was given at birth.

Lew Alcindor's chosen African name was Kareem Abdul Jabbar. I recall that
some part of his name means "light". I looked up the name Ahmad Jamal in
Google (because I remember his great music) and found it at
http://www.ahmadjamal.info/ .  He was already recording in 1950 under that
name, and was born in 1930.  His bio doesn't really give any reason why he
has a Muslim name.

People who became members of Black Muslim groups frequently adopted these
Arabic or Muslim names, (Cassius Clay= Mohammed Ali) but knowing when that
movement began requires more time than I can spend right now.  I think I
recall that the first days of the movement were back in the 1920's.

Now, you can probably come up with the name of a (?Vikings) football player
who used either Jamal or Ahmad.

In alt.english.usage on Wed, 07 Jan 2004 23:26:57 -0500 meirman
<meirman@invalid.com> posted:

P&M

I think either I'm wrong here about the date, or the names have to be
divided into 2 categories.  I was talking to a friend on Friday, and I
remembered that I had a black friend named Berlinda when I was about
21, who was almost the same age as I.  She was born in 1948 I think in
Northern Indiana.

My friend has a business with hundreds of regular customers, maybe
half of them black.  She's met a lot of women with unique (in her
experience) names.  One was named Credella, and she would be in her
late 50's or 60's now.  I think she was born in the south, or her
parents were. So her name goes back to 1943 or earlier. My friend
thought her name and Berlinda were both southern names.  

(Baltimore itself is south of the Mason-Dixon line, but she's not
including it when she says South.  I don't know how many Americans
would.)

Still, I see a difference between these names, and Shenaiya, Keisha,
Shewanda, and many more that I forget, that seem to be coined by
changing one or two letters from a much older name, and then changing
one or two letters in the new name, and so forth**. That is what I'm
thinking started between 1965 and '70, and maybe it did.  

**I had until today thought Berlinda was in that category. I thought
it was a recently modified form (when my friend was born) of Belinda.
But my friend doesn't think so.  Darn, I should have checked Google
first.  She was a Catholic saint. Still is I suppose. :)  "Feastday:
February 3  A hermitess of Belgium. Berlinda, also called Berlindis or
Bellaude, was a niece of St. Amandus. She entered the Benedictine
convent of St. Mary's at Moorsel, in Belgium. She later became a
hermitess at Meerbeke."

I can't find when she lived, but I found someone whose family tree
includes someone by the name Berlinda in 962.  Boy was I wrong.

soc.culture.african.american.moderated seems like a good newsgroup for
you to ask your question, although I think I only participated in zero
or one thread

s/ meirman    If you are emailing me please  
say if you are posting the same response.

Born west of Pittsburgh Pa. 10 years
            Indianapolis,   7 years
            Chicago,        6 years
            Brooklyn NY    12 years
            Baltimore      20 years