The most popular African American baby names-Aaliyah, Gabrielle, Kiara, Cameron, Jordan, and Nathan-are perfectly ordinary. And popular culture notwithstanding, these distinctive names aren’t especially common. The idea that they don’t-that all black parents use the same naming convention-is ridiculous. Of course, there are plenty of African Americans who give their kids Anglo names. African Americans wanted to distinguish themselves from whites, and naming was an easy means to the end. ”The underlying philosophy of the Black Power movement,“ writes Fryer, ”was to encourage Blacks to accentuate and affirm black culture and fight the claims of black inferiority.” The adoption of “black” names is consistent with other cultural changes-like “natural hair"-prompted by the movement.
It wasn’t until the 1970s and the rise of the Black Power movement that this shifted in the other direction. In the 1960s, Anglo-American names were common among African American children. First, that names like Reginald and Kiara are far more likely among black children than names like Jake and Molly, and second, that this is a recent development. In a 2003 paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, economist Roland Fryer found two things.
Setting aside the many problems with this question-for one, “Black American parents” aren’t a monolith–there’s an actual answer here.
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