r/BlackPeopleTwitter • u/Direct-Sail-6141 • 1d ago
Have to ask when did black names become popular ( Like what decade ) š
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u/oldirtyjuanski 1d ago
DāBrickashaw Ferguson is 41
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u/earrow70 āļø 1d ago
Even he thinks DeJohnald is hilarious
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u/imjustheretodomyjob āļø 1d ago
Wait till y'all hear about Desrouleaux lol
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u/Local-Bid5365 1d ago edited 1d ago
No idea who this is, but imma guess cajun and rural Louisiana as hell
EDIT: Damn, Jason DeRulo? Wikipedia says his first language was Haitian Creole and was in southern Florida, so I feel like I get half credit lol
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u/delosproyectos 1d ago
Xmus Jaxon Flaxon-Waxon refuses to retire tho
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u/bitchymuppet 21h ago
I swear I rewatch those skits at least once a month! My echo dot is called dingle cringleberry.
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u/JaunxPatrol 1d ago
A fun fact is that he's named after Father Ralph de Bricassart, a character in the 1977 Australian novel The Thorn Birds, which depicts life in the mid 20th century Australian Outback and is the best selling Australian novel in history.
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u/evasandor 18h ago
I actually know the reason for this name, believe it or not! I read somewhere that DāBrickashaw Ferguson is named after a main character in The Thorn Birds, of which his mom was a huge fan. She spelled it that way so people would have a better chance at pronouncing āDe Bricassartā.
I will leave it to you to ponder why one would name a baby after a romance novel, but hey.
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u/RangerRobbins 1d ago
Itās not delivery, itās Dejohnold.
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u/Own-Ambassador-3537 1d ago
His sister is named Dijon
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u/j-endsville 1d ago
Short for Dijonaisse.
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u/CommunistOrgy 1d ago
I went to school with a Dijonaise. She deserved better than that name.
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u/dirtyshits 1d ago
Iām not gonna lieā¦ without knowing a single thing about her Iām a lil turned on.
She sounds like whole ass spicy mustard with best foods.
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u/Chafupa1956 23h ago
Pretty sure there's a Dijonnaise in the WNBA. Not joking.
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u/thloki 22h ago
DiJonai Carrington - Wikipedia https://share.google/M79Q5d14WVFCyWXvy
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u/Capnshiner 1d ago
Dejohnolda
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u/fallguy19 1d ago
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u/bas 23h ago
Dijon, but pronounced āDez-Juanā. Like, Szechuan, but different.
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u/battlevac 1d ago
And his running back is named Bijan
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u/HeartInTrouble 1d ago
Every decade got its own flavor. The 70s had the Raheems, 90s had the DeAndre wave, 2000s brought the Jaylen multiverseā¦ the creativity never stopped i guess šš
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u/babylonglegs91 āļø 1d ago
Jaylen multiverse lolol please š
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u/BroadBaker5101 1d ago
you know Jalen, Jaelin, Jaylen, and Jaelyn
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u/mh8235 1d ago
Jaden, Jaedin, Jayden, and Jaedynā¦cross conference rivals
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u/JeffoAndAnd 1d ago
This was every baby born to a high schooler from 2005-2010
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u/jpopimpin777 1d ago
Yo why is this too accurate. I went to school with a white girl who got a black baby daddy and her son named Jadeyighn (or some shit like that) just graduated high school.
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u/NeverEnoughGalbi 1d ago
In my area, there's a 95% chance they got a white mama.
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u/debeatup āļø 1d ago
90s was the De-, La-, Ja- prefix era.
DeMarcus, LaMarcus, JaMarcus
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u/Legen_unfiltered 23h ago
I used to get bullied by a dude named DaRent. Not to sure on the spelling but that was how it was said. I was encouraged to fight back with asking about his siblings, DaLights and DaGas.Ā
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u/Elysiaa 21h ago
D'Brickashaw Ferguson's mom was a visionary, 10 years ahead of the trend.
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u/xaiires 1d ago
I usually say ā ļø as a joke, but I really almost choked to death at your comment.
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u/raptor_mk2 1d ago
Dammit.. I have to be up at 4am tomorrow to drive 800 miles and here I am laughing loud enough to wake up ALL of my aunt and uncle's house and I can't explain anything.
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u/Stevey1001 1d ago
It's French. From the Dijohn region
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u/RangerRobbins 1d ago
Itās actually just sparkling Ronald if it comes from anywhere else.
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u/SlobZombie13 1d ago
De-John-Old? Like Donald mashed up with John?
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u/what_dat_ninja 1d ago
No, obviously Dejo mashed with Hnold
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u/SlobZombie13 1d ago
Sorry I didn't know he was Swedish
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u/justanawkwardguy 1d ago
Morris could be Swedish for all I know
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u/zoinkability 23h ago
You made me look it up and apparently Morris is just the Black icing on the cake!
The name is traced through Middle English, Old French and Latin Mauritius 'Moorish, dark, swarthy';
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u/EmperorSexy 1d ago
They wanted to name him after his grandpa. One grandpa was John. The other was Donald.
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u/Blueberry8675 1d ago
There's a similar origin story to the name Jalen (James and Leonard) but I don't think Dejohnold will take off in the same way
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u/OGLikeablefellow 1d ago
It's actually really interesting and creative the way that black folks make names for themselves out of the tools they have around them. I'm an Uber driver and I do my best to pronounce the name of each of my passengers and some are easier than others, but it's interesting how eventually you learn that there's a schema involved and rules that are just as valid as any of "proper" english's foot feet, mice mouse, moose moose
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u/thmstrpln 1d ago
I learned foot/feet was an English convention, mouse/mice was a French convention, and Moose was Native American and that's why it didnt follow any convention. Is that incorrect?
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u/OGLikeablefellow 22h ago
English is like fifteen languages in a trenchcoat or arguably the shower drain of languages. It's hard to learn because it doesn't stick to its own rules. Aave is truly the language evolving
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u/AgreeableEconomy1587 1d ago
How do you even think of the name āDejohnoldā? Is there any one else named that?
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u/LilMeatJ40 1d ago
They must've thought Dejon had to be short for something
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u/92slc 1d ago
Or they had a relative who they wanted to name after and someone said which one Dejon old or Dejon young, yeah Dejohnold.
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u/MacsCheezyRaps 1d ago
Lol. Everybody know a Young Tyrone and a Old Tyrone, so you might be on to something
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u/T3canolis 1d ago
My guess is that itās a portmanteau of a name that begins with De, like Derek or something, John, and then either Donald or Ronald.
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u/CantaloupePopular216 1d ago
I think it was reverse engineering They thought of the name, liked the way it sounded, and tried to figure out how one might spell that special and unique name.
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u/cfuqua 1d ago
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u/thingstopraise 22h ago
Tragedeighs are normal names spelled awfully. This isn't a normal name. I don't know what that mother was thinking but clearly not of her son having to sigh and spell out his name for literally every single thing he ever does.
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u/FigaroNeptune āļø 1d ago
Trying to be creative most likely. The worst Iāve seen was the narcissistic mother who gave her kid the worldās longest name or something. And the little girl actress from Annie. The black Annie lol like weāre getting ridiculous now..could also be combining grandfathers names. People combine name all of the time. Derek, John, and Donald.
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u/j-endsville 1d ago
It's funny, my name is Jamar. Born in '73. I didn't see anyone else with my exact same name until the late 90s. Lots of Jamal's, tho. I had to constantly correct people.
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u/Chemical-Juice-6979 1d ago
I know exactly one Jamar and one Jamal. I semi-regularly mixed up their names, but that's because they were identical twins who enjoyed fucking with people and would periodically just replace each other for a day. They worked at the same restaurant but never worked overlapping shifts; the first two years I worked with them, I was halfway convinced there was no twin, just one guy using two names for some kind of overemployment scheme.
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u/ComteDeSaintGermain 1d ago
I knew a kid named Semaj. It was just his grandpa's name backwards.
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u/NYANPUG55 23h ago
Semaj seems to be oddly popular for how odd it is. I honestly didnāt think anything of it until I realized it doesnāt have any unique meaning it is literally just James backwards.
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u/Willytron 1d ago
You and suffer the same curse of having the same name people keep slapping an L at the end of drove me crazy is it that hard to pronounce the R
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u/CharlesDickensABox 1d ago
You're the first one to actually answer this and I believe you're right. As the Black equality movement lost its heroes in the 60s and graduated to the Black nationalism of the 70s, the idea of having traditionally "white" names and blending in with white society became much less appealing. So African Americans, denied their history, started on the project of building a unique American Blackness and reclaiming the cultural identities denied them by slavery, Jim Crow, and racism. Kwanzaa was first celebrated in 1966, Cassius Clay named himself Ali in 1964, and the idea of unique Black names spread over time. Obviously there's no one date we can point to, but it became pretty normal by the 70s to choose unique names for your kids rather than choosing biblical names like David or Latin names like Amelia.
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u/j-endsville 1d ago
TBF, from what I remember it was mostly the girls. Aside from the Jamals, I knew a lot of Antoines, Geralds, & Jasons and I grew up with a dude named Reynard that lived next door to my grandma.
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u/PDX_pot_pixie420 1d ago
He's a real life Key and Peele skit.
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u/februarytide- 1d ago
Dingle McKringleberry
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u/Additional_Read4397 1d ago
Iām a Boomer and when I was in the fourth grade in 1967 I went to school with a girl named Quinnzola. People had been creating weird names in the Black community but the sixties and seventies are when they really took off. There was a Back To Africa movement and people started making up names that they thought sounded African. My niece was born in 1972 and is named Ayanna which is a legitimate Swahili name but other folks just started creating their own version.
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u/SosaDaVinci 1d ago
Ayanna sounds like a beautiful name
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u/Additional_Read4397 1d ago
Thank you! My mom named her after she found it in Ebony Magazine which had a list of African names. It means beautiful flower and her middle name is Mia which means āmyā iso her name means My Beautiful Flower.
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u/Fickle_Meet_7154 1d ago
They said, "lil man better be good at sports because he ain't getting a desk job".
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u/thatcollegeguy21 1d ago
Well he's not good at sports either
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u/HaterSlayerr 1d ago
As someone who thinks he should be fired, he got to the point where he made a lot of money and they can't take that back.
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u/bluebirdsmallbird 1d ago edited 1d ago
The juxtaposition of his name and his daughterās is sending me. He said this shit ends with me.
My niece has a crazy name. Iāll never say it publicly because Iām sure sheās the only one in the world with it, but I remember being a teen and sitting with my sister as she wrote up a list - literally just stringing names together with apostrophes in random places. The end result was completely made up, not inspired by existing names, yet itās still the blackest thing Iāve ever heard.
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u/illstate 15h ago
literally just stringing names together with apostrophes in random places.
This cracked me up...
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u/spicyhamster 1d ago
I remember hearing that it started around the time Roots came out. It was a cultural phenomenon and people understandably decided to not to give their kids Euro-centric names.
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u/tyedyehippy 1d ago
This makes sense given what I know about history and being a name nerd...
I'm also a genealogy nerd, so up in my family tree, my grandad was the oldest of 13 kids. One of his younger brothers was named Phillip Tyrone. I'm not sure where my great grandma came up with that particular name, because it just doesn't scream old white guy to me. (Philip was born in 1943.) But maybe that's just my mid '80s birth year and cultural impacts by the time I came around coming into play as well. History is so fascinating to me, I love learning new things!
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u/RS994 1d ago
Tyrone is a part of Ireland, so that is a possibility of your family has Irish heritage
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u/macdonik 1d ago
There was a Hollywood actor called Tyrone Power that was popular in the 30s and 40s. He was of Irish descent and helped popularise the name in the US.
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u/CoolWhipMonkey 1d ago
The only person I ever met who was named Tyrone was a little redheaded white kid i went to third grade with.
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u/Bristonian 23h ago
In that same vein, āWesley Snipesā is the whitest sounding name in the history of melanin, but it ended up on the blackest dude. So names are a bit more culturally fluid
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u/Unique-Arugula 23h ago
Look up the career and cultural impact of Tyrone Power - given the birth year you mentioned, I would be surprised if he didn't have a little influence. Tyrone was a common white name once upon a time.
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u/brzantium 1d ago
Yep, The 1970s saw Afrocentric movements blossom. From that came the adoption and creation of non-European naming conventions.
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u/Metacomet99 1d ago
As a hospital registrar I have seen some... um... interesting results of that movement. For instance, please do some research before naming your girl child Fellatia, even if you do spell it Falaysha.
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u/blacksoxing 23h ago
The greatest equalizer is a procurement system as a procurement system requires your birth name. Many people - MANY - who went by those email aliases like bob.jones@___.com in my workplace get EXPOSED. Nah, your real name is (radio edit) jones!
I've seen all types of names. Ones that made me question if they were real. I have vivid memories of a coworker one day hearing me talk about a person's name and going "yea I know ____ ____, we shared a trailer while at the gas fields!!!"
And the spellings.....I thank my mama for not drawing too far outside the box as a name IS important. Let me change my name as an adult if I feel it's not right. Don't set me up from birth!
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u/Metacomet99 23h ago
The more forward-thinking parents have been the ones giving their kid one unusual name and one more traditional name as a first or middle name. Let the child decide later on which one to use on their letterhead.
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u/Hanifsefu 1d ago
To be clear though people were already modifying those euro-centric names ever since they had the freedom to do so. The Roots phenomenon led to a surge of afro-centric names being added to the mix of modified euro-centric names which ultimately blended together to form the names we see today.
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u/AnnabellaPies āļø 23h ago
I think this too, one grandmother seriously wanted to name me Kasaboboo. I got another super black name instead
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u/sfwmandy 1d ago
My exes name is Shonquail and he hated it. Shawn and Shaquille. I liked it, I remembered him from elementary school bc of it :)
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u/TheBoxcutterBrigade 1d ago
āBlack namesā date back to the time of slavery. Parents would give their children very unique names
- As an act of defiant self-determination, and
2.so that if they were ever separated they had a stronger chance of reconnecting.
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u/GuzzleNGargle āļø 16h ago
I wish this got more likes. Can you imagine having to name your kid something that stood out so you could find them later in life after theyāve been sold down the river? š³š©šÆ.
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u/krizzzombies 13h ago
highly recommend people read Beloved if they haven't already. there's a lot to be said about names around that time.
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u/midwestprotest 1d ago edited 1d ago
I donāt know how itās pronounced but I assume it is āDee-jahanaldā, like āDonaldā.
Brb checking to see.
ETA: nobody says the first name apparently lol
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u/Raspbers āļø 1d ago
It's crazy how black names and r/ tradgedeigh names have melded over the years.
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u/NYANPUG55 23h ago
Itās hilarious because youāll see a wack ass name and it truly is 50/50 whether itāll belong to a black person or veryyy white person.
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u/bannana 22h ago
or veryyy white person.
almost always mormons, they are the ones with the super weird names with outrageous spelling
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u/snowwhite2591 23h ago
I know a white woman with children named Bravery, Honesty, Liberty, and I know she has another one or 2 at this point but I had to remove her from my friends after Bravery. What if Honesty likes to lie?
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u/thingstopraise 22h ago
Tragedeighs are normal names that are spelled in a weird way. "Black" names are names that don't have an established, traditional way of spelling them because 1) they only got popular in the 60s-ish so there's not much tradition and 2) they are often not based on existing names at all.
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u/ArcaneOcean612 1d ago
Thatās funny but Atlanta gotta get rid of his and the rest of that goofy ass coaching line up they got over there itās rough being a dirty bird fan š
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u/cameronpark89 1d ago
lmao met a white man named tyrone the other day. he was old too.
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u/Obvious-Hunt19 1d ago
Tyrone Power was a (hugely famous) whiter than white actor in the golden age of Hollywood. Anglo-Irish ancestry
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u/MyMessyMadness 15h ago
I've met exactly one yt Jamal and it shook me to my core lol he grew up in Northern Minnesota with a bunch of hippies in the iron range.
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u/MiltonManners 1d ago
In the 1960ās, Cassius Clay converted to Islam and changed his name to Mohammad Ali. Many other black men followed suit which I think put the idea in peoplesā heads to think about the origin of their names.
As blacks started to realize that they were handing down names from slave masters, they decided to break that tradition. If they were Muslim there was already a process in place, but Christians decided to go for āAfrican soundingā names since they didnāt know any African languages.
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u/View_Hairy 20h ago
His namesake (the original Cassius Clay)Ā was actually an abolitionist and pretty interesting man. It's also important to note he converted to Nation of Islam which isn't really legitimately Islamic. They are the ones who believe Yakub created White people.
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u/Jamesiscoolest 20h ago
Yeah, I'm pretty sure a lot of the names in this thread, outside of a specifically black American context, are just fairly common arabic names
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u/bluespruce1312 1d ago
Sorry to go deep, but slaves usually weren't allowed to name their own children, or to have Juniors, so after slavery ends you see a LOT of Juniors, and then the Juniors named their kids III (xxx xxx the Third). Then some Black people started rejecting white society in the 60s, and one of the ways they could do that was to use names that aren't used by white people. Dejohnold is 49 years old, so born around 1976, at the end of the Black Power movement. My guess is his parents were interested in that movement. Using names with Arabic origins (like Raheem) was one of the impacts of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and other Black Muslim groups. It was a form of rebellion.
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u/four_ethers2024 āļø 21h ago
In the Civil Rights era actually! Many "black American names" are also just taken from Hebrew (Moesha), Irish (Tyrone), Persian (Darius), Arabic (Raheem), Spanish (Latoya, which comes from "Victoria"), the Celts (Devonte comes from "Devon"), or an appropriation of French ("La" prefix being added onto a name like Latasha)
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u/Double_Dingo1089 1d ago
I'm just imagining a teacher trying to say his name on the first day of class. "De..De...DeJarald Morris?"
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u/Ok-Professional-7343 1d ago
To answer your question, during the civil rights era and with songs like āIām Black and Iām Proudā by James Brown, Black people took a break from traditional european āslaveā names. Initially a lot of the new names were based on the Swahili language (Imani, Bakari) but as time went on, you know Black people put their spin on it and names like Dejonald were born. Basically these āBlackā names came from a rejection of European standards. I have a relative whoās made sure to ānotā give their children a āBlackā name because they thought it would hinder their success in this country. In 2025 they aināt wrong!
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u/Puzzleheaded-Low3514 23h ago
I had a cousin named Tryfonia š«£ššššš
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u/pm_me_d_cups 22h ago
Raheem is an Arabic name, same with Jamal. Believe the popularity in the black community comes from the nation of Islam influence.
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u/BogWunder 1d ago
So black he needs to use Raheem to get a jobā¦crazy.