Inventing our names, our selves
Thompson, Cliff
Inventing our names, our selves CLIFF THOMPSON Not long ago my wife told me that she'd heard a woman in our neighborhood call-ing after her daughter, "Come here, Shaquana!" My wife and I chuckled...
...My subsequent lack of guilt was due, I believe, to the fact that no one questions (or should question, anyway) the stature of Scots...
...Growing up, I knew a man, Mr...
...Malcolm X comes to mind...
...When I received no reply, I knew I'd been right: the woman was black, as am I. My reaction was born of the fact that, at thirty-one, I am a member of the last generation of black Americans whose parents didn't give them names like Shaquana or Chaico...
...It's another way of saying: "You want somebody your own size...
...I believe there are some combinations of syllables that should not go on anyone's birth certificate, period...
...Williams, who came up with the idea of naming his kids after certain bodies of water...
...So does the group that altered the course of popular music and had as its name a made-up word, one that wins the prize for weakest pun in the history of the English language...
...I grew up in predominantly black Washington, D.C., around older relatives with names like Pamela, Harry, and Catherine...
...Such names might potentially, if not inherently, spell disaster for the people forced to go through even part of their lives with them...
...Pick on somebody your own size, as if we black people have not proved ourselves in countless instances to be a tough, smart, accomplished bunch...
...Beatles sounds like bugs, but it's spelled with an a, as in beat, as in music...clever, huh...
...When people in a wealthy society are denied access to a piece of the pie, as African-Americans traditionally have been, there arises among them a desire to create, to the extent possible, their own society, with its own rules...
...You've found him...
...More conservative blacks-including my family and, in those days, myself-either laughed, or shook their heads, or, like me, did both...
...I attended school with Roberts, Lisas, and Darryls...
...I believe that when we feel guilty over chuckling at a name such as Shaquana, what we are really saying to ourselves is, Come on...
...History provides several examples of successful, influential people who gave themselves previously unheard-of names...
...how the girl herself spells it, I'll most likely never know) is different...
...I don't condone their actions-but I understand the impulse that leads to them...
...From there, it was but a short step to choosing monikers that sounded just as exotic but were, unlike Kunta and Kizzy, the products of parents' imaginations...
...And yet my own head was shaken, I think now, out of a secret respect...
...I don't think so...
...Not yours-mine...
...So, should I have restrained myself from laughing at the oddness of the name Shaquana...
...The only difference is that it was made up untold centuries ago, by people who thought the world was flat, if they thought about such things at all, and it came to mean something more...
...Is this not the United States of America, a nation founded by people who didn't like the way England was run and couldn't speak the language anywhere else...
...I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the same impulse manifests itself, much more benignly, in names such as Shaquana...
...Or been surprised at the fact that I immediately identified the race of the person it belonged to...
...When he said something to the effect of "Guess we know what she is, huh ?," my friend's smile indicated something more than his amusement: a certain pride, a certain identification: Those people of mine...
...Inspiration doesn't come cheap, and in this case the price was paid by two of his children-Erie and Superior...
...It wasn't until the late 1970s, when the book and then the television miniseries "Roots" hit the black community with the force of a flood, that young parents began naming their children Kunta and Kizzy after Alex Haley's ancestors...
...Innately, it isn't...
...My wife and I chuckled over the name, which sounded distinctly made-up...
...I don't mean that I respect a parent's right to name a child anything she wants...
...Perhaps more tellingly, I once had a Jewish friend who chuckled over the fact that he'd met a woman named Israel...
...My cousin, a woman not given to telling tall tales, swears she attended school with a boy named Constipated Greene...
...Besides: a name like Eric (which I happen to like...
...Calling oneself or one's child Shaquana says nothing if not, "This is my name...
...Certainly, lack of economic opportunity is a primary factor in the tendency of so many young men to turn to the illegal drug trade...
...Then I said, "I guess I don't have to ask about the woman's race...
...Examples...
...And why not...
...Historically, a deprived group that gives its children made-up names rather than bending to tradition and choosing Anglo-derived ones must be tough, resourceful, and proud...
...it's my nephew's name) was made up, too...
...Why is the name Eric, then, innately better than, say, Saften, or Boruka...
...Last year, I laughed my head off at a "Saturday Night Live" skit, "Phil Mc-Cracken, Scottish Therapist," that poked fun at the supposedly fiery nature of Scottish people...
...But the case of Shaquana (that's how I spell it...
Vol. 122 • March 1995 • No. 6
