Scandalize my ("black-sounding") name

Confession: My name isn’t Shelly. That’s my author pen name: The face that I present to the world that sounds friendly and generic. My real name is LaShell. And no matter how many times I say it, it never fails that its mispronounced (“’la’ and ‘shell’, people… two separate syllables”), misspelled (Lashelle? Lachelle? Lechelle?), and confused with the many other sundry “chelle” variations. (After saying my name to the salesperson on the phone over and over again, I just give up and say, “Sure. My name’s Michelle. Whatever!”)

The sad part is that my mom thought very long and hard when she came up with my name. She said she was disappointed with the name my grandmother had given her, which was inspired by the Richie Valen’s song, “Oh, Donna.” She wanted her daughter’s name to be creative and memorable. She said there was a girl in her high school who’s name was LaJoy and she thought it was the most beautiful name she had ever heard. When the time came around to name me, she looked up various words in the dictionary to pair with “La” and stumbled upon “shell.” It sounded right and original. Unlike hers, my name wasn’t from some random tune that was playing on the radio when I was born.

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And as it turned out, I’m from a generation of black kids who had moms who wanted to be creative with our names. They came up with the most inspired spellings and pronunciations that they thought would make us stand out in a crowd like the special snowflakes they believed us to be. Well, it worked. We certainly stood out from the crowd! Unfortunately, it also backfired. Those same names have become the subject of ridicule for every comedian and movie that wants an easy laugh. (Anyone else remember Lafuwndah from Napoleon Dynamite?) It’s also statistically proven that resumes with “black-sounding” names are more likely to be overlooked by potential employers.

Lafuwndah and her man. I guess the do-rag was a prerequisite.

It’s a harsh reality, but many in America who see a name like Shaniqua, Javaughn, or DeShawn, on their Caller ID, have a image of a lip-smacking, head-wagging, long-fingernailed belligerent black woman on the other end of the line, even if that couldn’t be further from the truth. A name that was meant as a gift from our mothers has become a burden for some.

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Maybe that’s why when I had my daughter and chose her name with my husband, I tried to come up with a sweet, but admittedly basic name that would be hard to confuse. Coincidentally, its also hard to identify as remotely ethnic: Chloe Morgan. And I’m not the only one! When I skim Facebook and catch up with black friends from grade school and high school and see the names of their children, I’m taken aback by how generic all the names sound compared to the more “creative” names that I remember filling my school roster when I was younger. Gone are the Shanices and Rakeems. Hello, Kirstin, Johanna, Marcus, and Christopher! Like the ethnic groups of old who changed their surnames from Rosenberg to Ross, or Ling to Lee, on some level, are we also “white-washing” our ethnic identities?
 

On the other hand, part of me wonders if you grow up in a sea of Aishas, whether names like Megan and Amanda start to sound exotic after awhile. I know when I met a girl named Gretchen in my integrated high school, I thought it was the coolest name I ever heard. Maybe that’s the real reason why we’re choosing these more racially ambiguous names for our children. One man's boring is another man's "exotic."

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On a side note, I’ve been fascinated to discover that more and more when I run across other girls and women with the name LaShell only half of the time it’s a black face staring back at me. In fact, I had a fun conversation with a perky blonde 16-year-old awhile ago about how we had the same name but spelled it slightly different. (She had an “e” at the end.) And though my daughter’s name is Chloe Morgan, her cousin (who is white) is named Briannah. Like my mom, her dad and her mom wanted something creative and inspired too and went all out with the spelling.

So I guess the joke's on America. As the ethnic lines become more and more blurred, names that were once associated with black, white, and everything in between won’t exist anymore. You have black girls with the name Chloe and white girls named Briannah. Future employers will have a hell of a time nitpicking over those resumes!

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- Black Girl Nerds contributor, Shelly Ellis