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ArchivesRe: Reason for African American names using apostrophes?
in reply to a message by Tempestgirl
This is something which developed over the last 40 years as the creation of brand new names for children became a strong part of African-American culture.
I don't know of formal research on this. However, I believe that the idea of having apostrophes as part of the spelling of names comes from three sources.
First, it comes partly from the existence of French, Italian, and Irish surnames that do use the apostrophe in their spelling. D'Amato, L'Hereux, O'Connor, etc. are just a few of the many examples of such surnames which occur in the United States. D'Andre, which was one of the first of these names to become popular in the African-American community, does exist as a French surname in that spelling. I don't think this goes back to the "French being sympathetic to abolishing slavery"; I think it goes back to a combination of many African-Americans having ancestry from Louisiana, where French surnames are common, and from the general American idea that anything French looking or sounding is "elegant".
The other large influence comes simply from a problem with the lack of use of diacritical marks in American typography. In most other European languages, there are certain accent marks that are used in the spelling of many words and names. Among the most common are the marks seen in "é" and "è". Before the last few years, most typescripts used in the United States simply did not have such diacritical marks available. However, they are very common in French and Spanish names. Many parents who were attracted to such names because of their idea that they were sophisticated or elegant wanted to reproduce the marks in names such as ANDRÉ or INÈS. It was impossible, however, to put such marks on a birth certificate or other official forms. The closest you could get was to use an apostrophe instead. A great many of the apostrophes that occured in African-American names back in the 1960s when they first became common are placed in such a way that I'm sure they were "standing in" for the diacritical marks. Andre', Mich'ele or Miche'le, and Rene'e are all examples of this, where the placement of the apostrophe seems to me to be an attempt to reproduce the French accent mark in the only way that was available at the time.
A third factor (though probably by far the least important in the African-American community) was the use by authors of many fantasy and science fiction novels of the apostrophe to make the names of their characters look more alien or exotic.
Once the idea of using apostrophes in names became established because of the above three factors, apostrophes just became part of the "respelling repertoire" for African-American parents who created new names, and so today are for many just another way to make a name truly unique. And African-Americans are by far the best cultural group at creating truly unique names. Most Americans of other ethnic ancestries will often say they want a "unique" name for their child, but when you suggest something that really is unique to them, they back off.
I don't know of formal research on this. However, I believe that the idea of having apostrophes as part of the spelling of names comes from three sources.
First, it comes partly from the existence of French, Italian, and Irish surnames that do use the apostrophe in their spelling. D'Amato, L'Hereux, O'Connor, etc. are just a few of the many examples of such surnames which occur in the United States. D'Andre, which was one of the first of these names to become popular in the African-American community, does exist as a French surname in that spelling. I don't think this goes back to the "French being sympathetic to abolishing slavery"; I think it goes back to a combination of many African-Americans having ancestry from Louisiana, where French surnames are common, and from the general American idea that anything French looking or sounding is "elegant".
The other large influence comes simply from a problem with the lack of use of diacritical marks in American typography. In most other European languages, there are certain accent marks that are used in the spelling of many words and names. Among the most common are the marks seen in "é" and "è". Before the last few years, most typescripts used in the United States simply did not have such diacritical marks available. However, they are very common in French and Spanish names. Many parents who were attracted to such names because of their idea that they were sophisticated or elegant wanted to reproduce the marks in names such as ANDRÉ or INÈS. It was impossible, however, to put such marks on a birth certificate or other official forms. The closest you could get was to use an apostrophe instead. A great many of the apostrophes that occured in African-American names back in the 1960s when they first became common are placed in such a way that I'm sure they were "standing in" for the diacritical marks. Andre', Mich'ele or Miche'le, and Rene'e are all examples of this, where the placement of the apostrophe seems to me to be an attempt to reproduce the French accent mark in the only way that was available at the time.
A third factor (though probably by far the least important in the African-American community) was the use by authors of many fantasy and science fiction novels of the apostrophe to make the names of their characters look more alien or exotic.
Once the idea of using apostrophes in names became established because of the above three factors, apostrophes just became part of the "respelling repertoire" for African-American parents who created new names, and so today are for many just another way to make a name truly unique. And African-Americans are by far the best cultural group at creating truly unique names. Most Americans of other ethnic ancestries will often say they want a "unique" name for their child, but when you suggest something that really is unique to them, they back off.
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Replies
I’m sorry you’re wrong the D apostrophe in DeAndre and the L apostrophe or L as in Lawanda are derivatives of the French and the Spanish who use DE to show the connotation of a certain family such as DeAngelo meaning of Angelo or la Wanda LA, LE in French are the preference for masculine or feminine nouns. All of that comes from the Spanish and the French what is perplexed a lot of people is that those who do not know how apostrophes German, umlauts and learn in law are used, randomly shove these grammatical devices into names, because they think it looks cute. It often leads to a lifetime of chronic mispronunciations, but they are derivatives of certain languages.
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What do you think I am "wrong" about? Of course the apostrophes in French and Italian surnames are just alternative spellings for "De" and "La". I did not say anything that contradicts that.
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I have to disagree, I’m a 56 year old white female and I have an apostrophe in my name. You said 40 years ago maybe for African Americans, it is quite popular yet I like to think my mom invented it
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Okay, and? She didn’t. Keep that white “we did it first” bullshit to yourself.
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Grow up. While I agree, Ton'yas mom didn't invent the apostrophe, there is no need for the white "we did it first" bs. It would be far better if you took a different approach to letting someone know that maybe their life experiences are not the "first ever" usages of something.
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I had to look this up after the news story today about the lady with a weird name and a knife
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I thought they were using scrabble tiles and a hat to name babies.
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Thanks for that information. It's quite interesting to note that the occurance has only been around for the last 40 years or so. I, too, had thought of the Louisiana tie but being from the NE I thought there could be a different reason for the use in my area. It's curious that the US doesn't use diacritical marks more often as we are a nation of immigrants and the original names would have included them. I suppose in order to assimilate more easily many dropped the accent marks (voluntarily or not). It's a bit sad that with all our cultures and backgrounds we don't have a more diverse range of writing that is commonplace that would include these marks. The other option I see is the individual constantly correcting others to include them, or correct them on pronounciation that would have been obvious if the accent marks were used in the first place. Or as we see here, substituting another punctuation mark that exists incorrectly to achieve the desired effect. It's too bad.
By the way, how were you able to include them within your writing?
Thanks,
Tempestgirl
By the way, how were you able to include them within your writing?
Thanks,
Tempestgirl
2
Inserting accents and their uses in French and Spanish
It is not generally possible to reproduce such markings using a keyboard, but such symbols exist in most fonts nowadays. It is quite possible to insert them into e-mails or whatever else you may wish by copying and pasting them out of a word document. Simply insert the desired character into a word processing document and insert it where needed.
I often use this to insert accented characters or IPA symbols into postings, comments, and e-mails.
Here is a sample:
Voilà, j'ai une étoile dans ma poche! Il y a une château dans le forêt. Tu es une amie chère. L'île est très belle. Aïe!
These symbols are the grave (à), acute (é), and circumflex (î) accents and the diaeresis (ï). In French orthography, they serve varying functions.
The grave is mainly used to distinguish homographs, which are usually also homophones, but it also changes the pronuncation of the letter "e" from [ø] to [ɛ].
The acute is used only on the letter "e" to effect the pronunciation as [e].
The circumflex is used to denote that a silent letter, usually an "s", has been omitted from writing, sometimes changing the sound of "a" to [ɑ:], "e" to [ɛ:], or "o" to [o:], or lengthening the sounds of "i" and "u".
Lastly, a diaeresis is employed to indicate that a vowel (in French, usually an "i") is sounded separately rather than part of a vowel digraph, as in the interjections "aïe" and "aïlle", pronounced [ɑ:i] and [ɑ:ij], respectively. Both mean "ouch".
I hope that this has been helpful to you.
One final note, the acute is used to mark stress in Spanish when it does not fall upon the penult or to distinguish homographs, usually in monosyllables.
A Spanish diaeresis is only used upon the letter "u" to indicate that it is sounded prior to "e" or "i" following a written "g".
It is not generally possible to reproduce such markings using a keyboard, but such symbols exist in most fonts nowadays. It is quite possible to insert them into e-mails or whatever else you may wish by copying and pasting them out of a word document. Simply insert the desired character into a word processing document and insert it where needed.
I often use this to insert accented characters or IPA symbols into postings, comments, and e-mails.
Here is a sample:
Voilà, j'ai une étoile dans ma poche! Il y a une château dans le forêt. Tu es une amie chère. L'île est très belle. Aïe!
These symbols are the grave (à), acute (é), and circumflex (î) accents and the diaeresis (ï). In French orthography, they serve varying functions.
The grave is mainly used to distinguish homographs, which are usually also homophones, but it also changes the pronuncation of the letter "e" from [ø] to [ɛ].
The acute is used only on the letter "e" to effect the pronunciation as [e].
The circumflex is used to denote that a silent letter, usually an "s", has been omitted from writing, sometimes changing the sound of "a" to [ɑ:], "e" to [ɛ:], or "o" to [o:], or lengthening the sounds of "i" and "u".
Lastly, a diaeresis is employed to indicate that a vowel (in French, usually an "i") is sounded separately rather than part of a vowel digraph, as in the interjections "aïe" and "aïlle", pronounced [ɑ:i] and [ɑ:ij], respectively. Both mean "ouch".
I hope that this has been helpful to you.
One final note, the acute is used to mark stress in Spanish when it does not fall upon the penult or to distinguish homographs, usually in monosyllables.
A Spanish diaeresis is only used upon the letter "u" to indicate that it is sounded prior to "e" or "i" following a written "g".
1
un chateau, la foret! LOL
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Re:
It's curious that the US doesn't use diacritical marks more often as we are a nation of immigrants and the original names would have included them.
What a luxury to have different languages with scripts that differ only in the tiny flagella like accents, cedillas, bars, and the occasional eszets. What good would it do to maintain them when a large number of immigrants don't get to keep their цs, жs, and ыs anyway? Or what about me try to explain the difference of aspirated and unaspirated retroflex and dental d to ears not attuned to such differences?
Seriously, though, is their any point in distinguishing between German u and ü without somehow marking the French u as French? And isn't accent a tiny issue when Jesus in the US does not usually have the English pronounciation, and it is difficult to know how to pronounce Angel in any given instance? Note that in these examples, as well as the introduction of u (of the recent Muriel thread variety) in the Norman period, we often do not extend the alphabet, instead given new values to old symbols in particular contexts. This often goes so far as to be virtually unidentifiable to people who are unfamiliar with the source: Tamil (or properly Tamizh) is most often transliterated using zh to stand for a retroflex kind of l instead of inventing an accent on l.
It's curious that the US doesn't use diacritical marks more often as we are a nation of immigrants and the original names would have included them.
What a luxury to have different languages with scripts that differ only in the tiny flagella like accents, cedillas, bars, and the occasional eszets. What good would it do to maintain them when a large number of immigrants don't get to keep their цs, жs, and ыs anyway? Or what about me try to explain the difference of aspirated and unaspirated retroflex and dental d to ears not attuned to such differences?
Seriously, though, is their any point in distinguishing between German u and ü without somehow marking the French u as French? And isn't accent a tiny issue when Jesus in the US does not usually have the English pronounciation, and it is difficult to know how to pronounce Angel in any given instance? Note that in these examples, as well as the introduction of u (of the recent Muriel thread variety) in the Norman period, we often do not extend the alphabet, instead given new values to old symbols in particular contexts. This often goes so far as to be virtually unidentifiable to people who are unfamiliar with the source: Tamil (or properly Tamizh) is most often transliterated using zh to stand for a retroflex kind of l instead of inventing an accent on l.
2
There's different ways to pronounce Angel?
1
"Angel" in English is AYN-jel. In Spanish it's AHN-hel. (Actually that second "h" is better written as "kh," like you're preparing to spit. It's a sound common in Semitic languages, and Spanish has it too, before "e" and "i.")
1
Apologize for the typos. I must be looking back fondly for my teenage years.
1
You can include diacrtical marks in a couple of different ways in most computer programs these days.
First, if you find an instance where the marks are included already, you can just use the copy function to get them into your own writing. That's what I did with ANDRÉ and INÈS; I simply copied them from the entries where they occur on this very site.
You can also use the ALT key in combination with certain number codes in order to create letters with the diacritical marks. I am not sure if this works on all computers, but the codes on the following site usually work for me:
http://www.starr.net/is/type/altnum.htm
:)
First, if you find an instance where the marks are included already, you can just use the copy function to get them into your own writing. That's what I did with ANDRÉ and INÈS; I simply copied them from the entries where they occur on this very site.
You can also use the ALT key in combination with certain number codes in order to create letters with the diacritical marks. I am not sure if this works on all computers, but the codes on the following site usually work for me:
http://www.starr.net/is/type/altnum.htm
:)
1