See the article on Madame Noire HERE

What’s in a Name? Everything.

During the The Black Power movement of the 1960’s, folks dumped what they deemed as “slave names” and opted for the more meaningful Afro-centric ones. Back then blacks repossessed their names, and that was good. But was the “new black name revolution” good for all?

Some parents just opted to make up their own names. Like my cousin, who named her first child after a Nissan model she liked, “Celica.” Then that gets me to thinking about moms who name their kids in homage to the drunken binge that helped conceive them, like Alizé or Courvoisier. (Yes, these are REAL names of REAL people).

Comedians joke about those names too. Remember Eddie Murphy’s “Umfufu,” from Raw? How about Martin Lawrence’s alter ego, Shanaynay? And then there’s my personal favorite, “Boom Qui Qui,” because it brings INSTANTLY to mind a girl who wants to fight me because her man looked at me for .238792 milliseconds.

But in a day where our president is named Barack Hussein Obama, and the richest and most powerful black woman in America is named Oprah, do names really matter much?

Well, yeah. They do. A lot. Especially during this Great Recession, where jobs are tight and African Americans have the highest rates of unemployment, you might want to consider more…erhm…more race neutral names for your progeny. According to a research study conducted by economists Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathn of the University of Chicago Business Center, so-called “white names” received 50 percent more callbacks than “black” sounding names.
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“The saddest part about it is that its not the individual’s fault with the name, its the reader of the resume… but mostly the parent who decided that they would use an innocent child to make a statement instead of changing their own name to some unpronounceable vowel filled name that could have either come from some car, electronic device, unholy combo of music groups, car they were conceived in or alcohol that was being consumed the night of conception,” says popular blogger and radio host, T.J. Sotomayor III, who produces “Your World My Views, www.yourworldmyviews.net, and recently tackled the black name topic on his show, which airs Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturday 8-11 PM EST.

Names that present a potential roadblock to black job hopefuls:

Girls

Aisha

Keisha

Tamika

Lakisha

Tanisha

Latoya

Kenya

Latonya

Ebony

Boys

Rasheed

Tremayne

Kareem

Darnell

Tyrone

Hakim Jamal

Leroy

Jermaine

Names, according to the study, that got the highest number of call backs:

Girls

Emily

Anne

Jill

Allison

Laurie

Sarah

Meredith

Carrie

Kristen

Boys

Todd

Neil

Geoffrey

Brett

Brendan

Greg

Matthew

Jay

Brad