What's with those "strange" Black names?

If you've ever wondered about all those unusual Black names - often referred to as "strange" or "weird", and often the butt of off-colour jokes by the less politically correct white comedians - I don't think you need to be afraid to ask. Most Black people will happily oblige with an answer.

Black sports personalities, actors and entertainers, and just regular folks from suburbia, glory in names like Tayshaun, Raynell, Chaunte, RaMell, Jamal, Latasha, Rau'shee, D'Andre, Latonya, DeMar, Trevell, LaKiesha, Sha'Carri, Tayvon, Shaday, Kareem, Michandra, JohnTae, D'Quell, Lakasia, Tavondra, DeShaun, Dremiel, Shanequa. Comprised of apparently random blended syllables, often with random capitalization and random punctuation, they are nevertheless distinctively Black.

And that is (part of) the point. Such invented - and inventive - names have a double purpose: they are asserting individuality, but they are also deliberately - and assertively - identifying themselves as Black.

While the current trend can be said to have begun with the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 70s (and the later Afrocentrism cultural movement of the 1980s and 90s), the history of distinctively Black names goes much further back. Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, names like Booker and Perlie were almost exclusively used by Black people, and many Biblical names like Elijah, Isaac, Moses and Abraham were as likely as not to be associated with Black people. Names designating empowerment, like Prince, King, Caesar and Freeman, were also very popular. 

In fact, the trend of distinctively Black naming became much more pronounced during the antebellum slavery period, and that is no coincidence. (At the same time, White people started deliberately avoiding these names.) This was partly a reaction to a time when White overlords would deliberately change the names of Black slaves to more standard names like Ruth, Mary, James and Joseph. The chosen names were not actually African, just ... different and individualistic.

So, don't think of these names as strange or weird, think of them as creative, affirmatory and assertive.

UPDATE

Incidentally, the report that has been circulating of a US judge railing against the "ridiculous names" Black women are giving their kids these days is in fact spurious. 

It was a spoof or satire, in deliberately poor taste "to make you think", according to the outfit in question ("The Peoples [sic] News").