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Re: Origins of African-American names
The same goes for de and le. To the OP:You will see a lot of creole style names that use surnames (ex. LeBron/LeBrun, LeMont, and Develson) as forenames and names that are of English descent with a La- (ex. LaRhonda, LaTonya), Le- (ex. LeVaughn, LeAngelo) or De- (as in DeShawn, DeMarcus) in front of them to create names appearing in that Creole surname style. This evolved into other spellings, such as Lu- (ex. Lutawnya), Da- (ex. Dashawna), D' (ex. D'Antoine), L' (L'Shay), etc. This then evolved into using a variety of other prefixes added to English names such as A- (ex. Amaria), Ja- (ex. Jakeisha), J' (ex. J'Sean), Ka- (ex. Kamisha), Ma- (ex. Maliyah), O- (ex. Omarion), Sha- (ex. Shamika). A variety of spellings were then added (Amariya, Jakisha, Jayshawn, Meleah, etc.).Additionally, some elements seem to be used often such as -asia, -ika, -ish-, -asha for females and Tre-, -toin/-twan, -dre, -onte for males with others overlapping such as -ique and -awn.In the 80's there was a surge of Afro-centric names to feel connected with roots, such as Ebony, Zenobia, Kenya, Egypt, and Nubia. Thats as much information as I have.
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Thanks:) great info
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