A reader writes:
Your post on black names reminds me of a study, which came out a decade ago: “Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal?” [pdf]. The title says it all, and the answer is yes. To conduct this experiment, researchers “applied” for jobs posted in newspapers by sending out identical resumes under both white and black names. They found that job applicants with white names needed to send out 10 resumes to get one callback, while job applicants with black names needed to send out 15.
I’m not sure how “white trailer park” names like “McKynleigh” or “Maddysen” or “Shain” would stack up, though. I suspect those applicants would also not do as well against the Emily Walshes and Greg Bakers of the world.
Another reader:
Penn Jillette named his daughter Moxie CrimeFighter. Gwyneth Paltrow named her kid Apple. APPLE. Sure there can be class and racial politics to names. But sometimes a weird name is just a weird name.
A former NYC teacher notes an upside to distinctive names:
It’s a lot easier finding my former African-American students on Facebook.
Another has a nuanced take on the whole issue:
De Boer is quite right to observe that much of the derision toward “ridiculous” black names is rooted in racism. He is correct that racism is far more harmful to society than the class envy that mocks similarly “ridiculous” names among affluent white children, and that names are invented constructs. So what are we to do with these observations? This was always the point at which this sort of diversity harangue broke down for me.
In principle no child should be mocked or disadvantaged for their name, just as in principle any woman should be free to walk home alone, drunk, at night, in perfect safety, or in principle a free market should always distribute resources efficiently. Unfortunately for black children with unusual names, college women at closing time, and Friedmanites and Randroids everywhere, reality couldn’t care less about principle.
It’s just as wrong to mock a child for their name as for their skin color, disability, or any other characteristic they can’t control. But I think it is perfectly all right to criticize the self-centered vanity of parents who impose highly unusual names upon their children, especially in cases when it has real, widely understood – and yes, unjust – consequences for their future.
Another observes:
Many non-black Americans have ethnic pride but do not give their children ethnic names. Why? Perhaps because they have ethnic last names, like Murkowski, Chang, Scalia, Jindal, Bierstadt, Ozawa, Chavez, etc. They can name their children Emily and Michael and not lose their sense of identity. Very few black Americans have African surnames, which were lost to slavery. First names are their only chance to tie their names to their heritage.
Another shares an article on the history of that heritage:
Distinctive black naming persisted through the centuries; the folklorist Newbell Niles Puckett turned up thousands of such names culling records from 1619 to the mid-1940s, names like Electa, Valantine and Zebedee. But by and large, it remained a minority practice within black culture, and most black names weren’t all that different from those given to whites. Then, in the 1960s, something changed, resulting in an unprecedented spike in black creative names, to the point where just a few years ago, Freakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner noted that “nearly 30 percent of the black girls are given a name that is unique among the names of every baby, white and black, born that year in California.”
What happened? The dates, of course, are suggestive. The ’60s were a time of massive black protest from which emerged an accentuated separatist strain in black thought, epitomized in the Black Power movement. Blacks became increasingly interested in Africa and eager to show pride in their roots. (Indeed, “Roots” – Alex Haley’s book as well as the TV miniseries based upon it – itself had a remarkable effect on naming practices. According to Harvard sociologist Stanley Lieberson, the name Kizzy, which belonged to a “Roots” character, skyrocketed from oblivion to become the 17th most popular name for black girls in Illinois in 1977.)
Islam began in these years to have a clear influence, too, most visibly with Cassius Clay adopting the name Muhammad Ali in 1964. Others followed suit, including two fellows named Lew Alcindor and LeRoi Jones, whom you know as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Amiri Baraka. Around this time, an American boy named Barack Hussein Obama would be born. His given names, of Semitic origin, mean “blessed” and “good.” Soon, out of these more political traditions grew a new one of creating names whose sounds the parents merely found pleasing.
The Dish 