Name Giving Across Cultures: What’s in a Name

What comes first? The name followed by the personality, or the personality that is born to a name? My mother found my name in the society pages of a New York newspaper and liked the sound of it. Amanda means “fit to be loved” or “lovable,” and her choice reflects how she feels about me. However, it’s entirely possible that I also just popped out that way.

Cultures around the world use a combination of traditional naming structures; elements of nature and birth order, while others have had to come full circle, back to the names that their cultures once knew.

African-American Names
Sonia Weiss, author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Baby Names, explains that naming practices for African-Americans shifted depending on the time in history. During slavery, owners assigned biblical, classical, or short nicknames and stripped the slaves of their unique names. Families took American leaders’ last names, like Washington and Jefferson, in an effort to acclimate. After the Civil War, African-Americans returned to their roots and added the suffix, -index, to classic names, to form names such as Lucinda and Clarinda. Eventually, African-Americans invented their own names, combining popular names with prefixes and suffixes, to put stress on the names in the beginning or end to create individuality. These included strong prefixes, La- and Shan- into the mix with names like, LaTasha and Shandra, and suffixes, -quon and -ell for names like Maquon and Sidell. After the Civil Rights movement, powerful African-American men returned to their roots, choosing Muslim names and traditional names from their ancestors in Africa.

African Names
Naming traditions in Africa depend on the region, but can include double first and last names and factor in emotions around birth and pregnancy. Barack Obama, who took his father’s Swahili first name, means “blessed.” Most names from Africa refer to the details surrounding a child’s birth, such as the season, day of the week, number of family members, or the emotional state of the family during birth. In Nigeria, the Yoruba culture names children during a ceremony on the eighth day of life, while the Hausa culture, influenced by Islam, uses a two-part naming system, starting with Abdul and ending with one of God’s characteristics, as in Abdulsalam, which means “servant of peace.”

Japanese Names
Consisting of a family name followed by a given name, Japanese names implement nature and are similar to Chinese and Vietnamese naming structures, which do not use middle names as we do in the West. Female names usually end in the character -ko or -mi meaning “child” and “beauty” or -ka for “flower” or -na for “greens.” Male names might include the birth order, including ichi or kazu for first son and ji for second son.