5 years ago
What’s In A Name You Say? Plenty!
I am a member of many mom groups on Facebook and a common question is what I should name my baby? Too often I see suggestions that are ridiculous! It is easy to choose something cute in the moment. Our babies are our little princes and princesses we will look at them with parental eyes probably for the rest of their lives. Because of how we see we forget they are going to be adults one day. Those names do not carry over well into adulthood. “Crayola” just does not look good on a resume. Technically you should be able to name your kids what ever you want! They are your children! But we do not live in a forgiving world, we do not live in a world free from judgement, and we must question whether it is fair to the children who must survive childhood with these names.Let us be honest it is “survival” once you hit middle school. Children are cruel and merciless. Tormenting each other is fun, but for the kids whose parents named them “Lollipop” or “Pilot Inspektor’ their lives are miserable until they reach adulthood. Please do not use celebrities as an example, their kids will never have to hold a regular 9 to 5 like everyone else, their kids do not even have to go to a regular school they don’t have to go to school at all. Your little girl or boy will have to apply for a job one day, at least most of them will and “Apricot Jones” will not look so attractive.
For people who are African American it is especially important to give our children “normal” names. It is unfortunate that we must be more careful than most, more considerate of our children’s future. We know discrimination exists, and we know our resumes are bypassed if we have ethnic sounding names. Not only are we judged by our skin color, but we are judged sight unseen with names like “Tamika” or Rashawn which sounds normal to me, but to white America they sound like black names. We honestly cannot afford to move beyond our culturally normative names like “Tamika” or “Rashawn” into giving our children names like “Moscato” or “Crayola”.
Trust me on this! My name is Tanika, so I know what I am talking about. I often encounter people’s stereotypical assumptions based on my name. You have nine months, give it some time understand a name carries a lot of weight and for us it can be a heavy burden and an obstacle to overcome.
Thank you for reading and let me know what you think in the comments below!
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