The Name Game

Names Carry Weight

When new parents finalize the process of naming their children, they are doing more than creating a name; they’re creating a lifelong blessing or curse for that baby. With all the different iterations of first names these days, I’m seeing some obvious status-coded mistakes. These mistakes will follow these children and, in the harshest cases, prevent them from being taken seriously in society.¹

Black Names, Class, and Burden

Let’s start with Black Americans… The name Shaniqua has long been a running joke. If I’m correct, In Living Color made fun of the name decades ago. The name Shaquille has the same ring.²

Obviously, Shaquille O’Neal is the first name that comes to mind when that name is mentioned. It’s a terrible name. When Shaquille first entered the basketball scene, I despised the guy because his first name preceded him. It wasn’t racial hostility. It was class signaling. I’ll admit, I’m a fuckin’ snob who also happens to be broke. Also, he played for a team that wasn’t the Boston Celtics.

Shaquille O’Neal, however, has proven time and time again to be an awesome human being. I love the fuckin’ guy. The guy is generous with his time and money. The guy obviously is making the most of his time on this planet; he couldn’t be more giving. His name is stereotypical of an uneducated and poor Black American — his parents were uneducated and poor Black Americans — which is a burden that was transferred to Shaquille at birth.³

Affixes and Sound

When some Black Americans give their children first names with the prefix “La”, they’re showing socioeconomic status. They may also be showing a reliance on the French and Spanish languages. The word “la” is the feminine form of “the” in French and Spanish. When the Acadians — I’m of Acadian descent — were moved down to New Orleans by the English Army from New France, the mix of Black slaves and poor White resettlers from modern-day Eastern Canada — New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island — merged the language traditions of those two groups and may have spurred the use of “la” as a prefix. It’s a tempting etymological idea.⁴

The French and Spanish influence doesn’t stop with “la”. The prefix “de” is the French and Spanish preposition that often means “of” or “from”, and “de la” can mean “of the” or “from the”. That is the reason the group De La Soul feels almost too perfect here: the group did not invent the pattern, but by 1989, it inadvertently captured a De La sound that was already moving through Black naming culture.⁵

There is a long list of prefixes being used by some Black Americans; they include:

• Da and De
• Ja and Jo
• La and Le
• Sha and She

We also see a suffix pattern in “-isha”, “-eisha”, and “-iqua”. With that being said, the song “Iesha” is still a banger. I will die on that proverbial hill.

The River Route

When some Black Americans gave their children first names with the prefixes “De” and “La”, they may’ve been showing more than modern invention. French and Spanish both use “de la”, and both languages were spoken in New Orleans before the city became American. Spanish records called the city “Nueva Orleans”, and the Historic New Orleans Collection still uses “La Nueva Orleans y el Caribe españoles” when describing that colonial period.

My Acadian ancestors may belong as one ingredient in that pot of jambalaya because some Acadians were deported to Louisiana in 1755 during the Grand Dérangement. The South Louisiana dish holds French, Spanish, Acadian, African, Creole, Caribbean, and Saint-Domingue influences. The Mississippi River gave that sound a route, and New Orleans gave that route a mouth.⁶

De La Soul feels too perfect because the name closes the loop: New Orleans jazz moved by riverboats, dance bands, migration, recordings, and imitation until the sound became part of the national Black musical vocabulary. De La Soul inherited that vocabulary through hip-hop, sampling, jazz, funk, and soul. Buhloone Mindstate makes the connection explicit with Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley, and Pee Wee Ellis, while the group’s name keeps “de la” sitting in plain sight.⁷

Aspirational Title Names

Another crutch that some Black Americans are currently carrying is the naming of babies with an aspirational tone. The names King, Queen, Prince, Princess, and others that are aspirational as name and title are quietly hurting those people’s chances of climbing the socioeconomic ladder.⁸ We must do better for these kids.

The King Exception

There are always qualifiers to my statements. There’s a guy in Georgia named King Randall, I, whose name is suspect, but he inspires me with his work; he’s helping the next generation of Black boys become Black men by teaching them the way Booker T. Washington did more than a century ago. He’s giving them instructions on basic tasks as part of his The X for Boys school. If you are going to donate money, I suggest you donate it to King and his school. The man is building the foundation for a beautiful life in Albany, Georgia.⁹

Names Worth Keeping

You may think I’m beating up poor Black Americans, and there’s some truth in that accusation, but I want to switch to Black names I like as a salve to that idea.

I like Halle because it’s soft, which mimics Halle Berry’s beauty. I love Lupita, although Lupita Nyong’o isn’t American, because it feels so damned classic. I like Maya because it’s cross-cultural. I like Nia because Nia Long is undoubtedly attractive. I like Zora because it feels mysterious.

I like August because it feels strong. I like Booker because of its allusion to a learned life. I like Chadwick because it somehow feels classic. I like Darius because it, too, feels strong. I like Denzel, although it feels like gibberish, because Denzel Washington is another awesome human being. Langston feels classic. Miles, Quincy, and Sterling are also allusory.

The X Cluster

White people are also fucking up their boys’ names. This fixation with adding the letter “x” to boys’ names is repulsive. I despise any and all of those conventions.

The X Roster

• Axton
• Braxton
• Daxton
• Jaxon
• Jaxson
• Jaxton
• Maxton
• Paxton¹⁰

White Aspiration Names

White Americans skew more educated and wealthier than Black Americans. There is a trend in White America that is giving the vibe that their lines were always wealthy. The names Bowen, Brooks, Huxley, Hadley, Maverick, Paisley, Piper, Sloane, and Tenley drive me nuts! I may be guilty of this because we named our middle daughter Poppy, but there’s a deep personal meaning to her name that survives that argument. I have an old friend who’s named two of his kids Brooks and Tenley; he’s exactly the guy you think of when you think of those names.¹¹

Asian Names, My Blind Spot

When I think of Asian names, I know that millions of them sound exactly the same. I don’t know much about Asian history. From what I understand, the meaning lies in how the word is pronounced, not in the Americanized spelling.

There are obviously jokes and slurs associated with Asian naming conventions, and some are funny, like the old “the cream of some young guy” joke. I’m not going to pretend that racial humor isn’t funny, because some of it’s hilarious. There’s a thin line between funny and racist, and it’s different for everybody, so I’m not going to test that line here, but the cruelty is sickening.

I’ve met thousands of Asian people from diverse cultural backgrounds, countries, and linguistic histories over the years. I learned the word for “oil” in Vietnamese, but I seemingly pronounce it like “gold”, which must be a nod to the intrinsic intonation basis of many Asian languages that can’t be sensed by many non-native speakers. The etymology of Asian languages must be more difficult to decipher than that of Western languages because the written word may not capture it as well as the listening ear.

With that being said, Asian Americans seem to have grasped onto the practice of choosing outdated American names and nicknames. The female names Cindy, Jenny, Ivy, May, Tiffany, and Wendy are clustered in that pattern. The conventions could come from American television and movies, or they may be tied to the sounds that those names make in English. I will say that many of them let me know that the person is either an Asian immigrant or the child of an Asian immigrant before I ever talk to or meet them. That’s not inherently damning, referring back to Shaquille, but it’s an obvious mistake within the minds of many native-born Americans.¹²

I want to stress that I am weak on Asian history and linguistics, so my background is anecdotal, and it comes from trying to learn little nuggets while meeting with Asian people of all backgrounds.

The Celebrity Vortex

There are so many different ways to compartmentalize and file names. There’s race, sex, and socioeconomic status, but there are other parts to the etymological history of names that are changing on this very day. There are the ideas of celebrity, heredity, and religion, which also shape the field.

The Fame Problem

When we think of celebrities, we launch straight out of the cuckoo clock. There must be an air of detachment when fame and wealth enter the picture. The names of these children are dire; they’re nothing more than vain attempts at branding their children, but the harm lurking underneath the surface is permanent.¹³

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian

• North West
• Saint West
• Chicago West
• Psalm West¹⁴

Elon Musk’s Children

• X Æ A-Xii Musk
• Strider Sekhar Sirius Musk
• Azure Astra Alice Musk
• Exa Dark Sideræl Musk
• Techno Mechanicus Musk, also called Tau
• Arcadia Musk
• Romulus Musk
• Seldon Lycurgus Musk¹⁵

Other Celebrity Children

• Apple Martin — Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow
• Brooklyn Beckham — David Beckham and Victoria Beckham
• Harper Seven Beckham — David Beckham and Victoria Beckham
• Blue Ivy Carter — Jay-Z and Beyoncé
• Rumi Carter — Jay-Z and Beyoncé
• Sir Carter — Jay-Z and Beyoncé
• Stormi Webster — Travis Scott and Kylie Jenner
• Aire Webster — Travis Scott and Kylie Jenner
• True Thompson — Tristan Thompson and Khloé Kardashian
• Dream Kardashian — Rob Kardashian and Blac Chyna
• Reign Disick — Scott Disick and Kourtney Kardashian
• Rocky Thirteen Barker — Travis Barker and Kourtney Kardashian
• Bronx Mowgli Wentz — Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson
• Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette — Penn Jillette and Emily Zolten
• Pilot Inspektor Riesgraf-Lee — Jason Lee and Beth Riesgraf
• Audio Science Clayton — Dallas Clayton and Shannyn Sossamon
• Kal-El Coppola Cage — Nicolas Cage and Alice Kim
• Cricket Pearl Silverstein — Marc Silverstein and Busy Philipps
• Birdie Leigh Silverstein — Marc Silverstein and Busy Philipps
• Sparrow James Midnight Madden — Joel Madden and Nicole Richie
• Rocket Ayer Williams — Pharrell Williams and Helen Lasichanh
• Zuma Nesta Rock Rossdale — Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani
• Apollo Bowie Flynn Rossdale — Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani¹⁶

The Names We Stopped Noticing

When we think of female names, we sometimes forget that they’re feminized versions of male names. Christine, Francesca, Georgia, Henriette, and Josephine are just a few examples, but they’re all around us. Yes, yes, yes… The patriarchy! I don’t like feminized versions of male names because they’re too derivative for me. A girl’s name, a woman’s name, doesn’t feel feminine when it’s derived from a male’s name.¹⁷

Again, my middle daughter’s middle name breaks this convention — it’s Josephine — but my wife wanted it, so “Josephine” won.

When we think of names, we don’t realize that we’ve been using biblical names. My name, for instance, is a biblical name. Your name is most likely biblical. In the Western world, we don’t give it a second thought because etymological history and the history of Abrahamic religions are almost one and the same. Some predominantly Jewish names Tamara, Temah, or Yael may sound foreign, but they’re also in the Bible.¹⁸

The Naming Test

I am not immune to this naming convention scheme, this etymological study, because my mother did the same. My father’s name was John, and my mother’s name was Anne. I’m named Jonathan as a play on “John with Anne”. If you say “John with Anne” aloud at a quicker pace, you will not even hear the difference. This may be the basis for my interest in the naming of names.¹⁹

I know that the vast majority of parents try to do their best for their children. The naming of children is one of the first serious tests for parents: it’s a psychological quagmire. When we do this, we have to stop thinking about ourselves; we have to be agnostic.

The narcissistic part of our brains is a crutch that must be thrown to the side when the practice of naming our children comes to bear. We have to think about the child’s future. We have to ask questions about how the child will be perceived in the world as he or she grows and navigates it once we are gone.

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Source Notes

1. Social Security Administration, “Background information for popular baby names”; Data.gov, “Baby Names from Social Security Card Applications – National Data”; U.S. Census Bureau, “Frequently Occurring Surnames and Forenames in the 2020 Census”; U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 first-name workbook. The Census workbook is a living-person name tabulation by race and Hispanic origin, not a current newborn-name or parental-motive dataset. ↩︎
2. Roland G. Fryer Jr. and Steven D. Levitt, “The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names”, NBER Working Paper No. 9938, September 2003; Charles Crabtree, S. Michael Gaddis, John B. Holbein, and Erik Peterson, “Racially Distinctive Names Signal Both Race/Ethnicity and Social Class”, Sociological Science, 2022. ↩︎
3. Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?”, NBER Working Paper No. 9873, July 2003; Patrick Kline, Evan K. Rose, and Christopher R. Walters, “Systemic Discrimination Among Large U.S. Employers”, NBER Working Paper No. 29053, July 2021; Daniel Kreisman and Jonathan Smith, “Distinctively Black Names and Educational Outcomes”, Journal of Labor Economics, 2023; The Shaquille O’Neal Foundation, official site. ↩︎
4. Stanley Lieberson and Kelly S. Mikelson, “Distinctive African American Names: An Experimental, Historical, and Linguistic Analysis of Innovation”; Lupenga Mphande, “Naming and Linguistic Africanisms in African American Culture”, 2006; FrenchDictionary.com, “Definite Articles in French”; Busuu, “Du vs de French: An Easy Guide for Beginners”; Cambridge Dictionary, la; SpanishDictionary.com, de. The language references identify French and Spanish forms; the naming studies address African American name formation. ↩︎
5. Historic New Orleans Collection, “Spanish New Orleans and the Caribbean: La Nueva Orleans y el Caribe españoles”; Historic New Orleans Collection, Vieux Carré Survey: Maps; De La Soul, official site; Library of Congress, National Recording Registry, “3 Feet High and Rising”. These records establish Spanish New Orleans, historical “Nueva Orleans” usage, De La Soul as a proper name, and the 1989 release of “3 Feet High and Rising”. ↩︎
6. National Park Service, Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, “From Acadian to Cajun”; Historic New Orleans Collection, “What’s the Difference Between Cajun and Creole–Or Is There One?”; 64 Parishes, Elizabeth Clark Neidenbach, “Refugee Revolution”; APiCS Online, “Survey chapter: Louisiana Creole”; Rebecca J. Scott, “Paper Thin: Freedom and Re-enslavement in the Diaspora of the Haitian Revolution”. ↩︎
7. National Park Service, New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, “A New Orleans Jazz History, 1895-1927”; Tulane University, “Riverboats and Jazz”; University of Chicago Press, William Howland Kenney, Jazz on the River; Carnegie Hall, “Jazz Hip-Hop Fusion”; The Guardian, “De La Soul on grief, Gorillaz and never giving up”, February 14th, 2025; Tracklib, “They Be Blowin’: The Jazz Icons on De La Soul’s ‘Buhloone Mindstate’”. ↩︎
8. John L. Cotton, Bonnie S. O’Neill, and Andrea Griffin, “The Name Game: Affective and Hiring Reactions to First Names”; Alexandre Pascual, Nicolas Gueguen, Boris Vallee, Marcel Lourel, and Olivier Cosnefroy, “First Name Popularity as Predictor of Employability”; U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 first-name workbook. These sources cover name perception, employability, and living-person counts; they do not directly measure the lifetime mobility effect of title names. ↩︎
9. The X for Boys, “Our Team”; The X for Boys, home page; The X for Boys, “About Us”; WALB, “21-year-old to open new school in Albany, will teach boys about life”, March 3rd, 2021; Georgia Secretary of State, X Boys Preparatory School Inc.. ↩︎
10. Behind the Name, “Jaxon”; Behind the Name, “Jackson”; Social Security Administration, “Beyond the Top 1000 Names”; Data.gov, “Baby Names from Social Security Card Applications – State and District of Columbia Data”; U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 first-name workbook. The data identify spelling, frequency, time, geography, and living-person patterns; motive is not measured in these files. ↩︎
11. Stanley Lieberson and Eleanor O. Bell, “Children’s First Names: An Empirical Study of Social Taste”; Mark Elchardus and Jessy Siongers, “First Names as Collective Identifiers: An Empirical Analysis of the Social Meanings of First Names”; Jo Lindsay and Deborah Dempsey, “First Names and Social Distinction: Middle-Class Naming Practices in Australia”; Social Security Administration, “Change in Name Popularity”; U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 first-name workbook. These sources address first names as social-taste signals and as public name-pattern records; individual family motives are not measured. ↩︎
12. Wenhao Diao, “Between Ethnic and English Names: Name Choice for Transnational Chinese Students in a US Academic Community”; Costanza Biavaschi, Corrado Giulietti, and Zahra Siddique, “The Economic Payoff of Name Americanization”; Rachel Edwards, “What’s in a Name?: Chinese Learners and the Practice of Adopting ‘English’ Names”; Kevin Heffernan, “English Name Use by East Asians in Canada: Linguistic Pragmatics or Cultural Identity?”; Boston University, “Her Name Is Qiongyue. You Can Call Her ‘Joanna’”, April 21st, 2023; FamilySearch, “Tiffany Name Meaning”. These sources treat English-name adoption as legibility, identity negotiation, assimilation pressure, and name meaning. ↩︎
13. Jean M. Twenge, W. Keith Campbell, and Brittany Gentile, “Fitting In or Standing Out”, Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2011; Jonah Berger, Eric T. Bradlow, Alex Braunstein, and Yao Zhang, “From Karen to Katie: Using Baby Names to Understand Cultural Evolution”, Psychological Science, 2012. These sources address naming novelty and cultural evolution; celebrity-name harm is not directly measured. ↩︎
14. People, “Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s 4 Kids: All About North, Saint, Chicago and Psalm”, updated June 15th, 2026. ↩︎
15. People, “Elon Musk’s 14 Children: All About the Tesla CEO’s Sons and Daughters”, updated June 6th, 2025; People, “All About Shivon Zilis’ 4 Children with Elon Musk: Strider, Azure, Arcadia and Seldon”; ABC7 San Francisco, “Elon Musk changes his newborn’s name to comply with California law”, May 25th, 2020. ↩︎
16. Marie Claire Australia, “Gwyneth Paltrow Explains How Apple Martin’s Name Came About”; People, “All About David and Victoria Beckham’s 4 Kids”; InStyle, “Meet Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Kids: Blue Ivy, Rumi, and Sir”; People, “Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott’s 2 Kids: All About Stormi and Aire”; People, “22 of the Cutest Photos of Khloé Kardashian in Mommy Mode with Her Kids, True and Tatum”, updated June 27th, 2026; People, “Blac Chyna Shares Sweet and Silly Dancing Video with 8-Year-Old Daughter Dream”; People, “Kourtney Kardashian’s Kids Share a Sweet Sibling Moment in New Photo”; People, “Meet Ashlee Simpson’s 3 Kids, Bronx, Jagger and Ziggy”; People, “Busy Philipps’ 2 Kids: All About Birdie and Cricket”, updated July 2nd, 2026; People, “All About Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale’s 3 Kids”; People, “All About Pharrell Williams’ 4 Kids, Son Rocket and Triplets”; People, “Penn and Emily Jillette on Moxie CrimeFighter, Zolten”; Encyclopedia.com, “Lee, Jason”; i-D, “Los Angeles illustrator Dallas Clayton draws happiness”; People, “Nicolas Cage’s 3 Kids: All About Weston, Kal-El and August”; E! News, “Inside Nicole Richie’s Private World as a Mom of 2 Teenagers”. These records identify the listed public celebrity-child names; the essay’s moral judgment remains the essay’s own. ↩︎
17. Behind the Name, “Christine”; Behind the Name, “Frances”; Behind the Name, “Georgia”; Behind the Name, “Henriette”; Behind the Name, “Josephine”. ↩︎
18. Behind the Name, “Jonathan”; Behind the Name, “John”; Behind the Name, “Tamara”; Chabad.org, Miriam Szokovski, “What Does the Name Yael Mean?”; Bible Hub, “Temah”. ↩︎
19. Behind the Name, “Jonathan”; Parents, “John Name Meaning”, June 2nd, 2024; Parents, “Jonathan Name Meaning”, June 24th, 2024. The “John with Anne” explanation is family-origin testimony. ↩︎